Peripheral ARTeries Art Review, Special Edition by Artpress

Special Edition

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Biennial Edition Installation • Painting • Mixed media • Drawing • Performance • Public Art • Drawing • Video art • Fine Art Photography

RUSSELL METZGER JUNYI LIU AARON DESHIELDS SYLVIA SUSSMAN KEN WEISENSEE HUN KYU KIM MICHELLE PERAZA CAROLYN SCHLAM LEAH OATES

Henry, Oil on Aluminum, 2017, 48’’x 60’’ a work by Michelle Peraza (Canada)

Be that as it may, this catalog or any portion ther eof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without express written permission from Peripheral ARTeries and featured artists.

Exhibirion by Brad Waters

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Contents 4

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Lives and works in Toronto, Canada

Leah Oates

Lives and works in Camarillo, California

lives and works in Toronto, Canada

Lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Ken Weisensee

Lives and works in New York City, USA

Lives and works in Berkeley, California USA

Hun Kyu Kim

Lives and works in Detroit, MI, USA

Lives and works in New York City, USA

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Sylvia Sussman

Lives and works in the United States

Special thanks to: Michael Betancourt, Teresa Wells, Jared Schaffer, Jean-Claude Bise, Ashley Cassens, Hildy Maze, Karissa Hahn, Juliana Pepper, Jane Sheiko, Max Savold, Julia Ă&#x153;berreiter, Deborah Esses, Margaret Noble, Joseph Goddard, Nathalie Borowski, Marco Visch, Xavier Blondeau, J.D. Doria, Matthias Callay, Luiza Zimerman, Kristina Sereikaite, Scott D'Arcy, Kalli Kalde, Carla Forte, Mathieu Goussin, Evie Zimmer, Dorothee Zombronner, Olga Karyakina, Robert Hamilton, Isabel Becker, Clare Haxby, Carrie Alter, Jessica Bingham, Agnieszka Ewa Braun, Fabian Freese, Elodie Abergel, Ellen van der Schaaf, Courtney Henderson and Francine LeClercq

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Peripheral ARTeries meets

Leah Oates Lives and works in Toronto, Canada

The world thus appears to be a complicated tissue of events in which connections of different kinds alternate, overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole. All phenomena are processes, connections, all is in flux, and at moments this flux is visible. - Peter Mattiessen from The Snow Leopard The Transitory Space series deals with urban and natural locations that are transforming due to the passage of time, altered natural conditions and a continual human imprint. In everyone and in everything there are daily changes and this series articulates fluctuation in the photographic image and captures movement through time and space. Transitory spaces have a messy human energy that is perpetually in the present yet continually altering. They are endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty and fragility. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of existence.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum due direct the trajectory of your current artistic research?

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Leah and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit http://www.leahoates.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of introductory questions. You have a solid formal training: after having earned your B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design, you nurtured your education with an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and you are a Fulbright Fellow for graduate study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland: how did those formative years

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My formal studies where very important as they helped me to understand not only my path as an artist but also to claim inside that I was an artist. I had to have time to get to this point through the process of creating, making, working and dreaming in my art practice which also over laps with ones life. I grew up around artists and in the arts but I for some reason felt when I first began that it sounded pompous to say I was an artist. I feel very comfortable saying this now as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve worked and earned the title of artist through lots of hard work, discipline and with lots of deep love for my work.

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My experiences in the art schools I studied at taught me to be fearless in terms of what mediums I wanted to work with and I started as painter, then went into printmaking then into sculpture and then finally settled on photography. I recall at one point thinking “ We’ll that was a waste of time” but later on realized my work would look very different if I had not studied the various medium that I did as my work is more painterly and overlaps with printmaking too. I’m sorry I’m not entirely sure what cultural substratum means. Let me know and I’ll try to answer this. For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected Transitory Space, an interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. Inquiring into the resonance between space and time, your series has at once captured our attention for the way you sapiently projected the viewers into an hybrid visual experience that rejects any conventional classification and forces the dichotomy between the staticity of photography and the dinamic nature of time. When walking our readers through the genesis of Transitory Space, would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? As a child I liked to play with mirrors to see light refract, to see images, texts and objects reverse and to watch light jump around on the wall, in the curtains etc. Early training to becoming a photographer perhaps as I was already playing with double images in a way at this early stage. My whole life has been about transition and I see change in the world and around me all the

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Cedarvale and Don Vallery Ravines, Toronto, Canada, Color Photography, 2018 - 2019

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Cedarvale and Don Vallery Ravines, Toronto, Canada, Color Photography, 2018 - 2019

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time. Change, flux and the passage of time may be the only constant in the end. I think if people pay attention then they may see this. I think its the human experience to live within change and flux. People generally though feel change is uncomfortable which I understand but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always found change mostly exciting and I grow bored without some changes in my life. There are definite changes with the environment which is clear to me and many others. I see this an an open ended question at this time depending on what people decide to do. There is still time and its an open field now but perhaps not forever and part of my work is about this in between transition while we still have nature on our side. If humans keep pushing nature may turn in a direction that humans no longer can control. Humans never controlled nature but the harmony between human and nature may be lost forever. Its an interesting question will people step up and do the right thing or not and the how this plays out shows a way of viewing the world and the overall spiritual health of people at this time. Part of my work as as artist is to capture the sublimeness of nature as this juncture in time almost as a witness. I began doing double exposures many years ago and I think it connects to my training in printmaking where one has to break down layers of color and image to make lithograph or silkscreen etc. I also think of this method of working to be more similar to how I remember time passing. Time is not ever fixed and is always moving forward and double exposures aligns with the motion of time, the movement of light and of how memory is reconstructed.

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We have particularly appreciated the way your sapient use of multiple exposures reflects the visual cacophony of experience, that marks out the kaleidoscopic nature of our everyday life's experience, within our perceptual process. How do you structure your workflow in order to achieve such brilliant results? Would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? I’m basically like an old fashioned ‘street photographer” like Helen Levitt crossed with the plein air painter etc. and I capture flux in nature, light and the environment onto 35 mm and medium format film utilizing my cameras, film, silver, light, paper & photo chemistry as my mediums and tools. I load up my camera with film and extra rolls and I never really know what I’m going to get onto the film thought I do know my cameras really well. One of the reasons I’ve kept using film is that I love, know and understand my cameras similar to a musician who loves their instrumment. The other aspect of using film unlike digital is that there is always an element of chance which I very much like and think is also part of the work. I think my sensibility comes from what and where I decide to shoot, in how I frame an image and in how I choose to present the final works. This can be said of all artists in that it comes down to details, choices the artist makes and to a bit of luck and chance too. Your approach seems to remove any historical gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive it in a more

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Cedarvale and Don Vallery Ravines, Toronto, Canada, Color Photography, 2018 - 2019

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Cedarvale and Don Vallery Ravines, Toronto, Canada, Color Photography, 2018 - 2019

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atemporal form, stimulating their psyche and consequently working on both a subconscious and a conscious level. How did you decide to focus on this form of photography? I came to focus on the process of double exposures as I grew as an artist and as I become less rigid in terms of what I thought a photograph should and could look like. The truth is its no different than any other medium in that is can be anything it wants to be. I look at photography as painting with light and silver on paper and this frees me up. I was more concerned with art trends than I realized when I was younger but I think as I became more settled in myself and more confident I no longer looked outward but inward and listened to myself more and this loosened me up and move in whatever direction my art took me. I found my voice over time and the new work I think really shows this. With their powerful surreal visual quality, Transitory Space conveys such a stimulating combination between figurative elements and captivating abstract feeling to address the viewers to capture the experience of flow, inviting them viewers to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with wide freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meanings? And in particular, how open would you like your artworks to be understood? Humans leave traces and artifacts of our consciousness everywhere in our environment. Contradictory realities can be found co-existing wherever we look. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in what we choose

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Cedarvale and Don Vallery Ravines, Toronto, Canada, Color Photography, 2018 - 2019

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to think; what we choose to believe; and, how we choose to act. And, they can be found in what we choose to observe. When I look back on a moment it’s full of impressions and multiple exposures capture this. I make multiple exposures on specific frames in camera which allows me to display a more complete correlation of experiences that a single exposure just misses. Every moment captured on film is over as soon as the shutter clicks, recording the ephemeral. Yet, in reality, there is always a visual cacophony of experience. We are always living in many realities at once. Multiple exposures express the way we experience the world more accurately. When walking the viewers through the fine line between the real and the imagined, your artworks speak of reality: how does everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? In particular, how do you select the locations? I’m a person who needs to be in nature and outside everyday or I’m not at my optimal and I scout locations this way too. I generally like a location that is a bit wild, overgrown and not to tamed by humans as I find this way more beautiful in terms of the energy of all the growth and aliveness of a location like this. Its inspiring to me that nature keeps on keeping on and that nature is utterly continuous and relentless. It never gives up and can thrive within some pretty austere conditions. This fills my heart with hope. In a certain sense, there's a parallelism between your technical process and the nature of your artistic research regarding the idea of the ephemeral: are you interested in creating an allegory to invite the viewers to reflect on our

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Cedarvale and Don Vallery Ravines, Toronto, Canada, Color Photography, 2018 - 2019

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Cedarvale and Don Vallery Ravines, Toronto, Canada, Color Photography, 2018 - 2019

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perception of the outside world and on human condition in a general sense? Yes I agree that there has to be a open ended narrative for viewers to initially engage in. Once the viewer is engaged on a visual sense then one can go deeper. If one goes too deep right away it can be turn off for many folks which makes sense as so many of us are overwhelmed in this Information Age now. People are as visual as they are verbal and I think that what art and any visual culture can do and does do is to open up dialogues on all sorts of topics in an open ended way to hash out ideas and topic of the day and some works are timeless too as humans seem to deal with similar things over time though it can manifest in different ways. Narrative too is very important as it can focus and directing ideas on the work and its something an artist should pay attention to so that they have a say in the narrative around their work. Another interesting series that has particularly impressed us and that we would like to introduce to our readers is entitled Toronto 2018-2019. With its intense pallette of tones, this captivating body of works seems to push the envelope of the expressive potential of the double exposing negatives technique to question the balance between reality and our perception of it. How does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you created? I see this work as something similar to an X-ray to delve into a deeper levels of nature to capture the energy that is there and the layers of light

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and color under and/or close to the surface. My work emphasize the optical aspects of light, color and time passing onto film and within the landscape I’m shooting in. You are an established artist and over the years you have had solo shows nationally at Anchor Graphics, Artemisia Gallery and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago and internationally at Galerie Joella in Turku, Finland. How do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? In particular, how do you consider the role of emerging online technosphere — and platforms as Instagram — in creating new links between artists and worldwide audience? I’m deeply thankful to my gallery Susan Eley Fine Art in NYC, my collectors, friends and colleagues in NYC and in Toronto and to your magazine for understanding and supporting my work. This steady level of support means alot to an artist a as artists often work alone and this keeps artist going. Some of my support has been from gallery shows and other support has been from online exposure. Artists have to hustle and to promote their work and the more platforms a creative person has access to is a good thing I believe. One can choose how much or as little one wants to participate on social media as well as for some folks its not their thing which I understand. I very much like social media myself I have to say for a number of reasons. I can reach my friends all over the world for free and be in contact about what we all have going with our art, families, politics etc and whatever we

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Cedarvale and Don Vallery Ravines, Toronto, Canada, Color Photography, 2018 - 2019

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Cedarvale and Don Vallery Ravines, Toronto, Canada, Color Photography, 2018 - 2019

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want for free across a global platform. I think its a great way to promote ones work and for free. I can reach thousands of my contact across the globe for free or for a very low fee via social media. I think its good to that artists and entrepreneurs have ways to connect to an audiences that are low cost or better yet for free across the globe. This allows for more talent and innovation to be found and discovered and creates a more democratic platform for talent as reduces the pay for play model which is undemocratic in my mind. Talent, desire and innovation are front and center on social media due to the low cost to promote ones work there. I love this! We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Leah. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Its been my pleasure and I send sincere thanks for selecting my work for Peripheral Biennial ARTeries. I have a solo show in Spring 2020 lined up at Wychwood Barns Community Gallery and my main aim is to keep making new work and images. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to be out photographing as much as possible this summer into the remainder of 2019.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Carolyn Schlam Lives and works in Camarillo, California

I am a painter, sculptor, glass artist and author, currently working in oil, ink, mixed media, glass and wood. I am the author of two published books on art. The first, THE CREATIVE PATH: A View from the Studio on the Making of Art, published by Skyhorse Publishing and released in 2018, is a discussion of the creative process from multiple points of view and is targeting to creative people wishing to delve further into their practice. The second, THE JOY OF ART: How to Look at, Appreciate and Talk About Art, to be released November 4, 2019, is directed towards the art lover, who seeks a greater understanding of visual art. It will be a full color, hardcover book, and contain 150 images. I started as a young painter spanning the genres- abstraction, semi- abstraction, and a modern realism. At some point my work became concentrated on the figurative, it seeming the best form in which to express both my love of the abstract visual elements, and my desire to express emotion and point of view. I studied with a Russian master painter in Carnegie Hall, NY for over 7 years post college, and went on to work at Urban Glass in Brooklyn. I am currently exploring portraiture in its many aspects-- Traditional, in which appearance and character is foremost; Expressionistic, in which the inner life is heightened; and Stylized, in which the image becomes iconic. In addition to paintings in oil and ink drawings, I like to combine media and have done quite a bit of work exploring the combination of paint and collage. My sculptural work in glass is a bit more playful and whimsical than my imagery. My work has been shown widely in museums, galleries and books. In 2013 I was named a finalist in the Smithsonian Museum portrait competition and my painting, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Frances at 103â&#x20AC;? was subsequently acquired by the Museum. I also have work in several collections including Cedars Sinai, and the City of Los Angeles, as well as private collections. I am an artist in residence at Studio Channel Islands in Camarillo, California where I maintain my studio and teach. I continue to explore ways I can express myself creatively. I am delighted to announce that I have just completed my first novel.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

elaborate about your artistic production we would start this interview with a couple of introductory questions. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your B.A. Fine Arts, Harpur College, S.U.N.Y. you nurtured

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Carolyn and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Before starting to SPECIAL ISSUE

ASTONISHED GIRL Oil on canvas, 30 x 24”

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your education with many workshops and traning experiences, including an intensive class with Jimmy Wright, at the prestigious University of Chicago: how did thoseformative years influence your evolution as an artist and help you to develop your attitude to experiment? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your current artistic research?

modernizing the approach, and personalizing it. I am always seeking that emotional resonance, but have added clean, modern and elegant drawing that meets my aesthetic. You are a versatile artist and your practice includes oil, ink, glass and wood, and before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit http://carolynschlam.com in order to get a synoptic idea about your artistic production: would you tell us what does address you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? How do you select an artistic discipline in order to explore a particular aspect of your artistic inquiry?

I studied drawing and painting with Norman Raeben, son of the Yiddish writer Sholem Alecheim, in his studio at Carnegie Hall Studios in New York for seven years. This was rigorous study and included repeated exercises in drawing and painting the figure, still life and other subjects in oil, pastel and ink. I was there 5-6 days a week working most of the day for 7 years. Then in the 1990s I did two years at Urban Glass in Brooklyn. Workshops, like the one with Jimmy Wright furthered my practice.

Like most artists, I have a vocabulary in art that calls out for different media. Each offers an expressive modality that the others lack, so I have tried several and selected the ones that suit me best.

My training with Raeben was steeped in the tradition of Robert Henri, who wrote â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Art Spiritâ&#x20AC;?, and taught students to paint led by their senses and emotions, never by formula, always seeking authenticity, love of the light, compositional harmonies, and above all, line and color that is felt, not imitated or invented.

Ink and oil crayon for drawings, which allow me to play with clean lines and resist (oil and water); Oil paint for paintings, because no paint is as versatile as oil. Lately, I am enhancing my oil painting with collaged elements, and this is a major concentration in my current work. The discovery of a scrap store in Santa Barbara has now brought my creative

This has been the basis of my practice, but I have taken it a step further, 29

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THE RED BOW

STANDING FIGURE

Collage with paint, 30 x 20â&#x20AC;?

Oil on canvas, 40 x 30â&#x20AC;?

fervor to fever pitch as I find new scrap to add texture and pattern to these paintings. I choose warm glass because I am enchanted by the transparencies of glass. Something about the materials leads me to more whimsical treatment than my work in oil (see glass doll).

The work in wood is something I elected to do when I lived in northern New Mexico, and could find burned and distressed wood in the forest and lumber yard and could use the wood shop at the University.

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I visualize the sculpture lying dormant in 30

MIRROR Oil on canvas, 40 x 30”

THE POWER OF ART Oil on canvas, 46 x 36”

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GIRL IN GREEN

GIRL WITH GREEN EYES

Oil on canvas, 30 x 24”

the wood and just waiting silently for the artist to bring it to life. The sculpture “Tree-She” is a good example of this process; it was created from a hollow and burned tree trunk I found lying in a field.

the art; other times the art leads me to search for the material best to express it. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article has at once impressed us for the way you provide the viewers with such

So part of the impetus for the different media comes from accessibility, and part of it, in the search for ways to best express my creative impulses. Sometimes I find the material and invent 33

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a multilayered visual experience. In particular, we have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances that mark out your artworks, and we like the way they create tension and dynamics: how did you come about settling on your color palette? And how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork and in particular, how do you develop your textures?

paint over paint and paint on top of paint, this by thinning and glazing colors. I also use many tools besides brushes to apply paint-- rags, stencils, sponges, fingers and anything else I can get my hands on in the moment. Your artworks often display such a rigorous sense of geometry and symmetry to create such a coherent combination between sense of freedom and unique aesthetics. New York City based artist Lydia Dona once stated that in order to make art today one has to reevaluate the conceptual language behind the mechanism of art making itself: do you create your works gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes? In particular, how importance does spontaneity play in your daily routine?

I am still using the same wooden board to mix paint that I used in art school 30+ years ago, and after a dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, I remove the paint and wash down the board with turp. The patina that remains will be different for every artist as it is determined by the preponderance of colors the artist uses. My patina is a blueish gray and that is a key color for me. I love minor notes, and will often add black to my mixtures, giving the work a soft, tonal feel.

My work is instinctive, but it is predicated on years of working from life, from photographs and from my imagination. When you have done your homework, and made many studies, it is possible to step up to the easel and paint al primo.

My portraiture is notable for the fact that I cut the face into planes of color and you will often find strange colors in my shadows-- see the blue and green and rose and purple notes that somehow your eye finds acceptable. Girl with Green Eyes is a good example of this phenomenon.

The spontaneity is founded on the basics- linear and aerial perspective, value and hue, composition, etc. which all play their part in creating imaginary space, the illusion, which is the underpinning of image making.

I create texture utilizing the different applications of paint-- paint into paint,

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LITTLE FRENCH GIRL

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PARTY DRESS Oil crayon on canvas, 40 x 30”

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stop. The destination has been reached, even if it is not the one I planned to reach.

Ironically, skill, made possible by years of practice, makes spontaneity possible. I can dive in and begin because I have a clear intention, and then I am able to follow the work where it leads me. If I was just floundering, I might find myself down a blind alley and get lost.

Can you see it equally as a design, a pattern, and as an object? Then the abstract has not been obliterated, and the balance has been achieved.

It is spontaneity and frivolity based on years of hard work and then forgotten as I step up to the easel.

It is interesting that you use the word “oniric” to describe the atmosphere of my work. That dreamy, somewhat faded or tonal quality is the result of my training to feel the air and light, a la the Impressionists. The airiness will soften the color, mute it and remove the artificiality that can be caused by overly bright color.

Marked out with lyrical qualities and primarily figurative, your artworks feature such effective combination between reminders to reality and captivating abstract feeling, whose background create such an oniric atmosphere: how would you consider the tension between abstraction and figurative in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?

It is the addition of the black and the white into the hue that creates this oniric feeling. How do you consider the relationship between reality and imagination between your artistic research? In particular, how do your memories and your everyday life's experience fuel your creative process?

I am always conscious of the abstract, but am not satisfied with a purely abstract painting. I always want to move to the next step. But sometimes, if the work becomes too descriptive, and it lacks the vitality and beauty of the beginning, I must retreat and go back to the original impetus. It’s a balancing act.

An artist’s aesthetic preferences arise from who they are, and not necessarily a specific memory. What I find interesting and beautiful keeps popping up in my work. A certain way the head is turned, a certain kind of distribution of light, a quality of line, a palette of colors, these I identify as mine. That’s why they say an

When the work reaches the point where the abstract, the impetus, is felt, in the real, and one more stroke would turn the work in a different direction, it is time to

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INHALATION, ink drawing, one of 100 works

QUEEN

that comprise ‘IN BLOOM’ exhibition, 24 x 18”

Ink drawing, 24 x 18”

artist always paints herself and all her figures and faces resemble her. Certain motifs keep asserting themselves.

That pattern says childhood to me—I have adoped it as a motif. We keep creating and recreating ourselves. That’s all we really know how to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s a face or a field or a scribble. We do this unconsciously. But it can all be analyzed

I have made many works with a checkerboard motif, and then I remembered that my childhood home had a black and white checkerboard floor.

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THE BLACK VEIL, Oil on canvas, 42 x 34â&#x20AC;?

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GIRL WITH CAT mixed media, ceramic and metal

FAUCET GIRL mixed media, ceramic and metal

assemblage, about 10â&#x20AC;? tall

in the subjects we choose and what we decide is important about those subjects. Put ten artists in a room and give them a model to paint. Each of them will see

something not necessarily different, but of greater or lesser importance. They will draw what matters to them. That is what you will find on their papers, the artist in the model.

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remarked the importance of providing a space for the viewers to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of the illusion: how important is for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? When I am painting a figure, I want the viewer to feel 2 things: 1) the physicality of that figure, the humanity and gravity of their stance or expression, the weight and substantiality of their being; and 2) the miraculous feeling that they are alive, which means that they also have an inner life. If I have accomplished this, I have done a magic trick because I have made a believable illusion that a two dimensional image made out of pieces of paint, tricked your eyes and mind into believing you are seeing a three dimensional being with weight, a brain, and a beating heart. Truly a miracle!

GLASS DOLL, fused and painted glass doll, ceramic shoes, About 24â&#x20AC;? tall

Marked out with such unique seductive beauty on the visual aspect, your artworks deeply struck us for the way they incite the viewer to make new personal associations. Austrian Art historian Ernst Gombrich once

I would like the viewer to realize that accomplishment and to be buoyed by the staggering possibilities of visual art. It's important to remark that you are also the author of 2 books on art and

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I love to write, and am very grateful that I can use this skill to talk about what I know best-- art.

that your new book THE JOY OF ART: How to Look at, Appreciate and Talk about Art will be released November by Skyhorse Publishing: would you tell us something about this interesting project? Moreover, how important is for you to convey - and especially to explain - your ideas through a book?

Over the years your artworks have been shown widely in several occasions and you have a portrait in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks? In particular, how do you consider the role of emerging online technosphere in creating new links between artists and worldwide audience?

My first book, THE CREATIVE PATH:A view from the Studio on the Making of Art, released in 2018, was a paean to my training and to my extraordinary teacher, Norman Raeben. It is a book for creatives to delve into the creative process in all its aspects. After that book was published, I was visiting a Picasso show in a Museum in New York and I noticed how everyone was going from work to work traking pictures with their smartphones. It occurred to me that I might write a book that would offer the tools for art lovers to make visual art more understandable.

There are so many amazing contemporary artists and it is daunting for any artist to get their work shown and seen. My work has been in many exhibitions but usually a very small number of people actually see it. I consider the role of the emerging online technosphere absolutely crucial in reaching out to a wider audience. I am always looking for new avenues to get my work out there and can think of nothing more effective, and with a larger potential reach, than the many online sites now being created, including this magazine.

So I embarked upon this ambitious project to write an artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guide book to visual art, and that is what THE JOY OF ART turned into. It is a full color, hardcover book with 150 photos of works, some familiar, some not, and information to help make a visit to the museum more rewarding. I hope people will find it useful. The book will be released on November 4, 2019.

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I recently offered my work to a new device that will allow people to download many pieces of historic and

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WOMAN IN A BOX, wood box, glass and ceramic parts, about 24â&#x20AC;? tall

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TREE SHE Wood sculpture, 38 x 20 x 18”

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contemporary art into their homes, and I am continuing to be on the hunt for new opportunities.

of women with floral motifs. These include drawings, (“Inhalation” featured here is one of these), oil paintings, and glass flower plates. I am still seeking a museum or garden that would entertain an exhibition of these works.

I welcome inquiries by anyone in the business or practice of disseminating information about contemporary art. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Carolyn. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?

I would very much like to do a book on contemporary women artists and to work with a museum to sponsor an exhibition to accompany the publication. I have a publisher who would consider the book if I got a museum on board. I would like to thank Peripheral ARTeries for granting this very comprehensive interview and allowing me to talk about my practice.

I am currently making panels that marry painted elements to collaged papers, fabrics, wood, metal and other materials. (see “The Red Bow” as a sample) I am also doing some painting on glass panels, one layered on top of the other and then fired in the kiln.

I invite anyone reading this interview who has an interest in my work, anything I’ve said here, or wishing to acquire a work, to take a class or workshop with me or just say hello and send a comment, to please feel free to contact me. You will find my contact form on my website at www.carolynschlam.com

I am also actively seeking museums, foundations and organizations that may have an interest in adding one of my pieces to their collections. I will consider donation. I have a number of pieces I consider “feminist” that I would be interested in donating to women’s organizations.

Thank you. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

In recent years, I created a series of about 100 works that feature portraits

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Michelle Peraza Lives and works in Toronto, Canada As a second-generation Latin American Canadian, ethnicity, origins, culture, tradition, skin colour, value systems, customs, identity, migration, integration, and familial hierarchy and bonds raise vital questions. Large-scale portraiture is the catalyst allowing expression of these themes. I choose to paint individuals close to me; people often ignored and unseen in the history of the painted portrait, particularly the Latino race/ethnicity. The use of the male sitter stimulates conversations, concepts, perceptions, and realities of the patriarchy. I construct a version of the individual through a meticulous point system and linear comprehension of the face. High realism allows the character, ethos, psychology, identity and appearance of the person to manifest. Aluminum forms the substrate alluding and emphasizing masculinity and the working-class. Large scale provides a status as well as time for acknowledgment given the individuals frequent invisibility. Although I am a high realism portrait painter, for almost two years my substrate has veered from the traditional canvas or panel. I work on aluminum. The reasoning behind this is twofold. Aluminum connotes 1. masculinity and 2. the working class. Historically speaking, portraiture has been the subject of the elite and dominated by the male painter. I am a minority, of lower socioeconomic status, and female. Aluminum was first given to me by my dad from a demolition site, with formed the substrate of a portrait of him. This material resonated with his life as an immigrant, Latino, working class man, and hyper masculine identity; topics of wanted to delve into through painted portraiture. Following this portrait, I made a series of large-scale bust-like â&#x20AC;&#x153;male headsâ&#x20AC;? on aluminum for my thesis year, Patria Potestas, of my fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s male relatives in succession based on a lineage, hierarchy, and overall patriarchal family structure. My work continues to focus on male portraiture post-graduation.

a wide idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BA in Classical Studies & World Religions you nurtured your education with a BFA in Drawing and Painting, that you received from the Ontario College of Art and Design, in Toronto: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does your cultural

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Michelle and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.michelleperaza.com in order to get

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attention, and honesty in painting a portrait to someone we normally would not stop, look at, and investigate their story. My Latino roots directly impact my current work and my path going forward.

substratum due to your Latin-American roots direct the trajectory of your current artistic research? First, I want to acknowledge my gratitude to Peripheral ARTeries including my work in this edition. I am very humbled to be amongst such talent. My formative years have profound influence on my subject matter, style, technique, and my spirit as a painter. In respect to my education, years of studying Classical Art, Architecture, Politics, Religion, everything that encompasses the culture of Graeco-Roman period really shaped and honed an aesthetic I already appreciated. Always drawn to a Classic, realistic and naturalistic approach to interpreting the natural world in art, I went on to major in Classical Studies. While studying, I appreciated even more the innovations that came into fruition by the Greeks; perspective, realism, naturalism, and proportion. I think my work pays homage to the attention to detail and the pursuit of realism the Greeks and Romans brought to the world. GraecoRoman art which centered on the political and religious life or the social elite, my work deters in the social classes and intention behind the sitters.

The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article has at once captured our attention for the way your sapient high-realistic technique provides your figures with such powerful narrative drive, to unveil hidden details of the identity of your characters to manifest: whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your philosophy on the nature of portraiture? How do you select the people that you decide to include in your artworks? In particular, how does your everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? My philosophical approach to portraiture is essentially to capture the spirit of the sitter and more importantly the integrity and truth the of person. I hope the end result is not just the control of paint and a proportional face, but the person comes to life in the painting. My intention in portraiture is to spend thoughtful and laborious time building the face so that I can give the opportunity to people we would never see in formal large-scale portraiture have a moment to be captured.

During my first degree, I produced a very minimal amount of work. My years at OCAD U really fueled learning paint handling and drawing proportions. I had a few really great professors that assisted honing my skills in portraiture creating a visual language to bring forward the conversations that interested me. In my final thesis year, I was able to bring together the knowledge I accumulated from both degrees, bringing a context and a skill to my work.

I paint men and therefore the men around me. Mostly my own family and more recently my husband and his family. As a female figure painter, I choose to investigate the male identity I choose them based on their face; if I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interesting or complicated to paint, has a lot of texture, a skin colour that interests me, etc.

One of my intentions as a painter is to give the time and bring the conversation to individuals often unseen in the history of portraiture, especially the Latino race/ethnicity. Especially as a person trained in the Classics, I realize I am taking a Eurocentric language/approach to figurative painting. It is even more important to me paint unseen identities. I hope, at the least, give time,

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My everyday life is exactly the thing that fuels me. I paint the people who I spend time around. I paint themes that arise in my own life. I break down, analyze and rebuild people that impact me. Artist Lydia Dona once remarked that in order to make art today one has to reevaluate the

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Porfi, Oil on Aluminum, 2017, 48’’x 60’’

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Henry, Oil on Aluminum, 2017, 48’’x 60’’

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crimson and dioxazine purple are crucial to bring life, the blood and veins into the portrait. Depending on the darkness or lightness of the person is how I settle on how much umbers and siennaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s I push into the painting.

conceptual language behind the mechanism of art making: are your works created gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes? My work is the opposite of gestural, I would say. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a very methodical, mathematical, and thought out process; every dot and line has a purpose. I begin with creating a smaller scale version of the sitter on tracing paper in a very linear approach in order to break the face down to the simplest lines. With this, I am able to scale up by measuring all the points in the face with charcoal or oil pastel. I measure the points onto my larger substrate, connect them with lines, then review the linear image and start forming the roundness of the facial features by eye. Once this drawing is complete, I then begin with my first layer without an underpainting.

Psychological, I am extremely fueled to show as much nuances and variations as I can, meaning true depictions are my intentions. Each painting will have 6 or more layers to record the many tones. My first layer is very simplistic, finding the light source and darkness. As I progress, I am able to see more and more detail and variations as I build the face up. Aluminum plays a prominent role in your artistic process and, as you have remarked in your artist's statement connotes masculinity and the working class. It's important to remark that it was first given to you by your dad from a demolition site, that resonated with his life as an immigrant, Latino, working class man, and hyper masculine identity. Photographer and sculptor Zoe Leonard once stated, "the objects that we leave behind hold the marks and the sign of our use: like archeological findings, they reveal so much about us". How importance has for you the physical nature of aluminum along with its symbolic value on an personal and historical aspect?

My process is very mathematical and has a strong linear foundation so that my proportion is correct and I can view the face first in the simplest, uncomplicated way. As I am progressing as a painter, I am leaving this crucial process into the finished painting. I am interested now in leaving into my work the way I built the face. We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful and often intense nuances that mark out your artworks, and we like the way they create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork?

As we all do in formal training, I started on stretched canvas. One assignment challenged to paint on an alternative substrate. I always was, and remain interested in the flat and classical substrate shape.

My colour palette is one of the most important parts of my practice as truth and my ethnicity are really important to me and the inspiration of my work. Most of my sitters are Latino, more recently Indian. Their skin colour is what makes me want to bring them to life in painted portraiture, a genre they are often unseen. My palette therefore is heavy on burnt umber, raw umber, red umber, burnt sienna, raw sienna and many yellow toned paints. Finally, alizarin

My dad gave me a recycled aluminum sheet from a demolition site. I painted his portrait on this. I was hesitant at first, but its qualities worked with the way my hands work. I was able to paint on a smoother surface, be able to scratch into in a way that destroys the composition somewhat, and resonate with the material. For me, historical portraiture connotes a patron commissioning a grand piece of art on a large

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S2, Oil on Aluminum Composite Panel, 2019, 24’’x36’’

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Jerson

Luis Carlos

Oil on Aluminum, 2018, 48’’x 60’’

stretched canvas or linen. Contemporarily, portraiture, even art, still connotes a higher social class.

your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning? And in particular, how open would you like your artworks to be understood?

My family has no artists nor do they frequent galleries or run in any artistic circles. I was able to have an education in classics and fine art and therefore form a visual language in this light. But this is not the world of the everyday people, working to make ends meet, especially the people I paint. Therefore, aluminum is my substrate of choice to have a little distance from the traditional canvas/linen. Your work is a visual narrative, that seems to be intended to convey a combination between emotion and a specific message: we daresay that

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Like everything else in life, the viewer/participant interprets what’s in front of them based on their own preconceived thoughts, emotions, ideas, concepts, and experiences. The viewer is free to interpret the painting however way they do. I simply name my paintings after of the name of the person (sometimes a letter and number depending when I paint the person multiple times), which could connote certain things (ethnicity, race, age,

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Deenat Oil on Aluminum Composite Panel, 2019, 48’’x48’’

etc). I would rather the viewer not read my artist statement or know my intentions before, influencing their line of thinking. I don’t need my

story or the story of the work to be understood exactly. We all look at faces everyday, this is not a subject that needs explaining on intentionality I

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Ram Lubhaya Oil on Aluminum Composite Panel, 2019, 48’’x48’’

think either. I think it’s clear I am trying to bring

even visual comprehend the story of a face.

that exact individual, their story, their truth, into paint in a large-format. Every viewer can relate or

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You usually paint large canvas, that provide the

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Henry 3.0 Oil on Aluminum Composite Panel, 2019, 48’’x60’’

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Ramesh, Oil on Aluminum Composite Panel, 2019, 48’’x60’’

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mentioned we are in a media driven time, which I think is what makes are even more powerful right now, it has further reach, a larger audience, and the most important, it can now reach people not necessarily attending art galleries.

viewers with such an immersive visual experience: how do the dimensions of your canvas affect your workflow? The dimensions definitely make it a longer and more laborious process. After completing an underdrawing from scaling up from a smaller size, I usually start around the eyes and try to complete the first layer in one sitting. In the second layer I still focus one mostly forms, planes, and values. As I progress through the layers I will focus on sections and refine until the section is complete. It is definitely an immersive experience for myself as well, I zoom in very close on the photograph and paint very close to the substrate.

Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of occasions, and you participated to lots of exhibitions, including your recent solo at the Northbound Gallery, Toronto Centre for the Arts: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks? In particular, how do you consider the role of emerging online technosphere in creating new links between artists and worldwide audience?

Your work also raises awareness on social issues, including the theme of , ethnicity, culture, identity and integration: Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once remarked that "artists's role differs depending on which part of the world they’re in. It depends on the political system they are living under": how do you consider the role of artists in our media driven contemporary age? How do you consider the power of contemporary art to tackle sensitive cultural issues in order to trigger social change in our globalised societies?

Painting is a very solitary activity. Social interaction and familial ties inspire the work, but ultimately, I am by myself painting the work. Currently, my audience, in a gallery setting, is there only when the work is on display or on Instagram, in which they do get to see more of the process of making the work. I wouldn’t want to tell my audience what to take away from the work in respect to the themes I paint, that is up to them and their own story. I hope my audience at least takes away the time, attention, respect and homage I give to the face.

Regardless of the age we live in, I think the artist is basically a commentator of their age, whether that is their intention or not. We can look back at any artists work and see it as a reflection of their personhood and the time they lived in. Each artist is fueled by a topic that for some reason stuck in their mind and is visually interpreting it, bringing into the public sphere. I do not think the role of the artist has totally changed because of media, media has given the artist a forum in which to present their work, definitely. For me, one role of the artist stays constant: speak our truth of whatever is instigating us to create art. Perhaps, the artist has become even more of a contributor to culture and not just a commentator. With the freedom of expression an artist has, as well as their creative format, we can tackle cultural issues in an inventive and thought-provoking way. I think in this way it can fuel change. This question

The online world, in the artistic career, is positive in that it can reach such a wide and diverse audience; people who maybe are without access to where artwork is conventionally displayed. It’s creating great links to artists and a new kind of audience, people who maybe wouldn’t have original art but loves to see it. It’s great for me too to find artists online over to world to see what is provoking others, their style, techniques. I can get inspiration too without going to typical art venues. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for

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Work in Progress, Oil on Aluminum Composite Panel, 48’’ x 60’’

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S1, Oil on Aluminum Composite Panel, 2019, 24’’x24’’ sharing your thoughts, Michelle. What projects

as well! Currently, Henry 3.0 is on display at The Idea Exchange in Cambidge, Ontario, I am taking commissions, working on a collaboration, and teaching private lessons. In my own painting practice, I am working on a couple of work pushing pastels, pinks and

are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Thank you for having this conversation with me

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Work in Progress, Oil on Aluminum Composite Panel, 48’’ x 48’’ purples into my paintings, exploring other colours from the masculine black or silver substrate. I am also working on bringing more dynamic, less static poses to my portraits. In the future I hope to complete another body of work that includes traveling to my Latin American

roots, similar to my thesis in which I travelled to Costa Rica. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Hun Kyu Kim Lives and works in London, United Kingdom

I craft precise allegorical pictures, employing a range of political, contemporary, and art-historical references and influences. Through my skilled application of oriental painting, I build intricate stories about an imaginary world. Yet this fictional world becomes an analogy for my interpretation and reflections on the very real recent political situation in South Korea and its startling transformation since a stamping out of a corrupt regime. I am a very typical artist who inherits the spirit of Candle Light Revolution of South Korea in 2017. Observing recent political changes in South Korea, I attempt to reconstruct the way that numberless political artists have paved for the tradition of oppressed through my subtle fantastic world. To grasp a hidden meaning inside of mundane objects, I frequently borrow diverse cultural references such as pop culture like SF film, cartoons, or even historical facts, rebuilding my imaginary world where a strict boundary between the myth and the reality becomes diluted. Therefore, I define myself as a storyteller. Images of fragmented and scattered narratives spread across the world and they started to be tangled together. Each story is working as an independent entity, but shares a common world full of imagination, making another narrative. With the exquisite dialectical allegory, each story shows a special fantasy to reflect on the barbarism hidden behind the seemingly innocuous material affluence of contemporary society where Capitalism and Neoliberals become a form of religion. As Candle Light Revolution turned out to be the most successful and peaceful political movement, likewise, I consider my artistic practice as a mode of non-violent political action and believe that the recent situation in South Korea can act as a fragmented blueprint for something more global, where people should feel encouraged to keep fighting to make positive changes in the world around them.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Hun Kyu and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would

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like to invite our readers to visit https://hunkyukim.wixsite.com/painter in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of introductory questions. You have a solid

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Homage to Bill Viola, Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 38 X 49 cm, 2017

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Derby Lovers

Regular Ordinary Artist Residency

Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 2018. 120 x 90cm

formal training: you hold a BA in Oriental Painting, and after having double majored in Aesthetics at Seoul National University of South Korea you moved to London to nurture your education with a MA, that you received from the prestigious Royal College of Art: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does your cultural substratum due to your Korean roots direct the trajectory of your current artistic research?

National University, I was trained as a restorer for ancient religious Korea painting such as Buddhism painting or traditional landscape painting. I was so interested in traditional images of ancient oriental paintings that I have trained myself the special technique over a decade during my school years. Although my works are based on traditional technique, narratives in my painting have close connection with contemporary global politics from which I

Hun Kyu Kim: During my BA in Seoul

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My underground is more beautiful than your overground

Dancing in the Moonlight

Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 2018. 140 x 105cm

Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 2018. 120 x 90cm

got many inspirations, studying Aesthetics. Aesthetics, well known as a general theory in art includes diverse subjects in Philosophy. Especially, I am so interested in political subject due to my adolescence in Korea society where political atmosphere changes dramatically.

world, combining a beautiful aura from traditional oriental painting and contemporary political discussion to bridge between the past and the contemporary. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries, and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article, has at once impressed us for the way you sapiently created unique visual identity,

The memory and experience in Korea stimulates me to be a political artist who tries to make strange but subtle and beautiful stories about an imaginary

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Porco Rosso, Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 2018. 140 x 105cm

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Ark for the one, Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 2018. 140 x 105 cm

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Soon, life will become more interesting, Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 95 X 95 cm, 2017

for the way you sapiently combined elements from oriental cultural heritage from and references to contemporary pop culture, as in the interesting Homage to Bill Viola and Derby Lovers. How do you

consider the relationship between Tradition and Contemporariness playing within your artistic research? Hun Kyu Kim: Many people might hear

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A crown for the King, Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 2018. 55 X 45 cm

about Trojan Horse. During Trojan War, the Greeks constructed a huge

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wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside.

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Grand Marckel Octopus, Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 2018. 95 x 75cm

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Long Long Summer, Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 2018. 140 x 105cm

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sometime it makes synergy effects, making another narratives, which seems to happen very spontaneously.

After The Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy, the Greek army crept out of the horse and opened the gates and destroyed the city of Troy, ending the war.

We have really appreciated the vibrancy of the nuances of that marks out Regular Ordinary and My underground is more beautiful than your overground: in particular, we like the way your artworks show that vivacious tones are not indespensable in order to create tension and dynamics: how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork in order to achieve such brilliant results?

Traditional oriental image combined with special religious aura and contemporary pop culture is a kind of wooden horse and its content is my army. This is because I consider my artistic practice as a form of political activity, creating intellectual infrastructure for contemporary people. Therefore, I borrow a variety of cultural references not only from Asian tradition but also from contemporary western culture to make my art works attractive and widely acceptable.

Hun Kyu Kim: Thank you for your kind compliment. Working as a visual artist in both cultural tradition in the East Asia and Western society, I can experience diverse paintings from both cultural backgrounds. Both scientifically accurate perspective in classical western painting and non physical perspective in Eastern paintings give me such a huge influence on my work, making strange and subtle, but interesting formation. Personally, I think it is evolving itself making another narrative in a continuous manner.

With their unique aesthetics, your artworks feature such a rigorous sense of geometry: do you conceive you works instinctively or do you methodically elaborate your pieces? In particular, how importance does spontaneity play in your process? Hun Kyu Kim: Due to technical issue, I have to make a very specific plan before starting a work.

Along with the beautiful aura from ancient East Asiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s traditions, it's important to underline the importance that the recent Korea political situation and its startling transformation plays in your artistic research. Mexican artist

Firstly, I set up one theme and make several stories that surround around the theme and then, combine those stories in a painting. Each narrative seems independent from each other, but

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the images and the symbols that you include, as in the interesting Grand Marckel Octopus: how importance do symbols play in your artistic research? In particular, did you aim to provide your work with allegorical features?

Gabriel Orozco once stated, "artists's role differs depending on which part of the world theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in": does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? Do you think that artists can raise awareness to an evergrowing audience on topical issues in our globalised age?

Hun Kyu Kim: At the first time I started those kinds of works, I really wanted to protect myself. Expressing political voice in South Korea used to be considered as a social taboo due to its historical reasons. Therefore, I frequently use allegory to hide something in my painting like a Trojan horse.

Hun Kyu Kim: I personally believe that my artistic activity is a form of peaceful political movement. It is attributed to the recent changes in political atmosphere of South Korea. Especially, Candle light revolution in 2017 is the moment when many Korean artists change their artistic attitude as well as their political activity.

After researching my practice, I find out that Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher, mentioned about the potential of storytelling that is distinguished from the information.

I am one of those who try to inherit the spirit of the Candle light revolution. Unlike the past political movement in arts including strong political manifesto or propaganda, I am making slow and steady but beautiful stories in a moderate way to attract not only the intellectuals but also general public. I believe it is a recent tendency in contemporary political movement and I am doing my best to develop and reinterpret it with my art works.

According to his theory, the storytelling becomes disappeared gradually in our contemporary society. I was pretty impressed by his idea and keep making stories through visual element to protect it from extinction Marked out with such unique seductive beauty on the visual aspect, your artworks deeply struck us for the way they incite the viewer to make new personal associations. Austrian Art historian Ernst Gombrich once remarked the importance of providing a space for the viewers to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of

Your artworks feature such effective combination between figurative and captivating surreal feeling, your artworks feature such a powerful narrative drive on the visual aspect, to push the envelope of the expressive potential of

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Better luck next time!, Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 30 X 34cm, 2018

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Bug's Life, Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 51 X 61 cm, 2018

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the illusion: how important is for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? Hun Kyu Kim: I personally believe that my works have so many interpretations depending on audience’s viewpoint, and sometimes, it leads controversial issues unconsciously. However, I do enjoy playing the controversial issues to stimulate viewer’s curiosity. Therefore, it is extremely important for me to trigger the viewers’ imagination with mysterious and subtle images. It is totally fine for my work to be interpreted in diverse ways. What I really want is that my works can act as a pivotal role in creating diverse discussions regarding social issues. As you remarked once, you believe that your personal experience is closely connected with both Korean history and global politics, and this spect seems to be reflect in your artistic production. Would you tell us how important is for you to create artworks related to something you knew a lot? In particular, how do you consider the relationship between direct experience and imagination within your artistic research? How does your current everyday life fuel your creative process?

Hun Kyu Kim: E.H. Carr believes that the historical fact is discovered by historians who can aware which facts can be a crucial historical fact among numberless happenings. Likewise, I believe that all the memories, pains, or even pleasure I’ve experienced are due to a certain historical facts. I track back the historical roots with a few years of researches and I find out many historical references are closely connected with my personal experiences. I personally believe that the experience also can be closely connected to that of contemporary people worldwide, leading general consensus or compassions. Over the years you have exhibited your artworks in several occasions, including your recent solo exhibition at The Approach Gallery in November 2018: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? In particular, how do you consider the role of emerging online technosphere — and platforms as Instagram — in creating new links between artists and worldwide audience? Hun Kyu Kim: Many artists enjoy online platform to promote their work or meet a huge number of audiences worldwide. However, in my case, I prefer to participate in artist talk or lectures as an artist or lecturer in person.

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This is because I can have more deep conversation that allows people to interact each other immediately.

It has been very diverse and fluid for historians to make a timeline in human history due to their various viewpoints. Some of the historians would establish their theories based on the development of an industrial system or aspects of social hierarchy. Others might want to borrow their theoretical background from the evolution of materials such as Stone, Bronze, and Iron.

We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Hun Kyu. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?

This year project starts with an idea where human history is recognized as 6 stages based on the infinitive circulation of weapon history: 1. Stone, 2.Metal, 3.Fire, 4.Bio Chemical, 5.Nuclear, and 6.Gene. The project comprises of 12 paintings with various sizes. Although each painting seems to be chronically arranged, indeed, it represents an infinitive loop, based on Chinese Zodiac that includes 12 animals from the mouse to the pig. Mixed with diverse cultural references such as Bible, historical facts or even SF fictions, the whole story will be created as a form of a ritual ceremony to pray for breaking the infinitive loop, announcing demolition of weapon industries. If you are interested in the show, please feel free to come and see it, and letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talk together.

Hun Kyu Kim: On the December in 2019, I plan to have a solo show in High Art in Paris. According to recently released news articles, 2019 is the first year when previous nuclear weapons that were produced during WW2, have gradually become expired. Therefore, there are a few optimistic opinions regarding denuclearization in North Korea in that it might be the first step of denuclearization of our whole world. However, it is a false belief. Many weapon industries are developing miniaturized nuclear weapons and they might conduct several local wars despite a peace agreement between the US and North Korea, leading the Third World War someday. In spite of the extremely pessimistic prediction above, I want to make experiment where a ritual ceremony and artistic activity meet together by making subtle but beautiful stories through a form of historical approach

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An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Winner winner chicken dinner,Traditional oriental pigment on silk, 39 X 45cm, 2018

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Peripheral ARTeries meets

Ken Weisensee Lives and works in New York City, USA

Often I am attracted to obscure or surreal imagery. Because of this, I enjoy drawing inspiration from unlikely places, such as my dreams. These dreams are often vivid and contain specific details such as images, numbers, names, objects or even colors. As the story unfolds, I try to remember certain scenes or images that have a large emotional and visual impact. In my awakened state, I process these remnant elements and use them as the inspiration to create the scenes I paint. I create my works using spray paint and a variety of other mediums including acrylic, oil, and watercolor. Intricate stencil-work is how I produce detail with spray paint. Not all my works are inspired directly by my dreams, but they do all have a dream-like state or uncertainty about them. I intend for my works to create mixed emotions within viewers. I enjoy and encourage people to have varying or opposing interpretations of my works. As a gay artist, some of my works do draw from contemporary LGBT culture and influences. My identity greatly influences the choices I make when creating works through subject, composition and even color. Ken Weisensee

Ken Weisensee began creating art through collage works. Over time he continued to improve his detail in cutting intricate pieces. His love for Contemporary Art and graffiti lead him to incorporate stencil work to create pieces using spray paint. Juxtaposing unlike themes has always been a continual expression in his art. Though spray paint is the most commonly used medium in his works, he also likes to include acrylic, oil, and watercolor. Ken has shown at various venues since 2013 throughout New York City, and other international cities through a traveling art exhibition.

production: in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? Moreover, are there any studies as well as experiences of training that did particulary direct the trajectory of your artistic journey?

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Ken and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would start this interview with a couple of introductory questions. Centered on the exploration of the theme of human body and its frailty, your artistic research conveys convey such a coherent combination between imagination and a rigorous aesthetics, and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.instagram.com/ken_weisensee_art in order to get a wide idea about your artistic

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First I would just like to thank you for this interview opportunity and interest in my artistic creations. My process begins in the digital world, where I prepare a sample of what my final work will look like. I do a lot of photo editing and manipulations to create my visions. After I am satisfied with the sample, I prepare a stencil for any parts of the work that are to be spray painted, which in most cases are the main figure. This is the stage I spend

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the most time in, due to the intricacy of the stencils. After the stencil is cut, I measure and plot its location on the canvas so that I can begin painting in a sort of layered format. Depending on the mediums and the number of stencils, there are varying amounts of layers per piece.

wanted to create a sort of stained glass window feel to it. Untitled is actually a self-portrait from a time when I was doing laundry. This piece is one of my personal favorites and it seems to derive a lot of different emotions from viewers. When I see moments like this I feel joy and excitement and want to share with others what I see through my artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye. I tend to find beauty in what others may consider mundane. I try to express what I see through my works.

I would say I have two definitive experiences that let me to my current state. The first was a collage project that I had in High School. It was one of my favorite projects, and I remember how relaxed I felt cutting out all the images. Though I may incorporate collage into future works, it is not a major artistic focus of mine currently. The second experience was learning about Banksy. The visuals and ideology of the graffiti pieces greatly impacted me. I decided to mix intricate cutting and spray paint together through stencil work. Over time I developed my process and then began experimenting with the addition of other mediums, such as acrylic, oils, and watercolors. This experimenting helps me create a variety of texture, and I always love trying out new techniques and mediums to further my work.

We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of your canvases, that - as in the interesting The Crab Won- create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork and in particular, how do you develop your textures? I will say I do love to play with color! When I create a work that is based off of a dream, I use colors that manifest in the dream so that I may create the most accurate representation of the visions. The scene in The Crab Won shows the moment just before the crab is victorious over the rat. In this dream I was on a purple bed watching the battle between the two on the floor. I incorporated the purple into the background and added the red strokes of watercolor the represent the blood and defeat of the rat.

For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected trust the world and Untitled, a couple of interesting artwork that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. We have particularly appreciated the sapient mix between essential still rigorous sense of geometry and evokative symbolism. When walking our readers through the genesis of this artworks, could you tell us how did you develop the initial ideas?

Works that are not inspired by my dreams, I rely more on instinct to determine the correct color and texture. Some works just call out to me as a specific color, while others the color may have an more underlying meaning in relation to the figure. When I was creating Untitled, I knew I did not want any other color than the deep red I chose. Though this particular work is completely spray paint, I added a textural spray under the red to give more depth and shadow. Works that have more of a minimalist background is where I add the layers of texture to give an extra shot of vibrancy.

I do love that you paired these two works together because as different as they appear, their development is very similar. There are moments in life when I see something out of the ordinary and think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s visually stunning. Both of these original photos were captured on a whim. A very close friend of mine posed for ...trust the world unknowingly when he claimed he was cold on a rooftop and all my other friends threw multiple blankets around him. The background was inspired by the triangular pattern of some of the blankets - I

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Many of your artworks are marked out with an elusive still ubiquitous symmetrical perspective and quite varied contrast between light and dark tones: how do you consider the relationship between such a captivating rigorous sense of geometry that pervedes your artistic production and the tones you select? How do you structure your pallette in order to achieve such brilliant results? I tend to like the simplistic contrast between black and white. This is the underlying backbone of the majority of my works. King of Bills for example shows the figure in this black and white state, but also with color added to specific sections that I want to highlight. This piece reflects the idea of a playing card, with a strict side profile and tight composition. The crown and sceptre are gold and the robe red, similar to the kings on cards. I painted the duck bill to draw attention to this character feature and create the contrast with the rest of the face. This contrast between the colored sections verses the black and white creates this vibrancy that appeals to my vision and imagination. I do like the simplicity behind it, and also feel it demonstrates the intricacies of the stencil work that I do while working with spray paint. With their powerful surreal visual quality, your works convey such a stimulating combination between figurative elements and captivating abstract feeling, whose background creates such an oniric atmosphere, as the interesting LX Hush: how would you consider the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work? I think my works show exactly that: an figurative focus or idea with an abstract background or placement. Think of when you dream; there are moments when you see something very specific and you know what it is and where it is. But as you continue dreaming, things change and what you thought something was initially could be something

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...trust the world

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LX Hush completely different or no longer where it was. This state of unknown perception is what I try to convey in my backgrounds; it generally is not a place, it is more of a feeling. LX Hush has an almost radiating light as itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s background. This abstract background makes you

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question where this scene is taking place, and my only answer would be in dreams. We like the way you encourage people to have varying or opposing interpretations of your

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behind, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meanings? And in particular, how open would you like your artworks to be understood?

artworks, and in this sense we daresay that your current art practice also responds to German photographer Andreas Gursky when he underlined that Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's

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The Crab Won interpretations especially on those works influenced by my dreams because I myself may not know the underlying meaning. For works that I create figures with intended purpose, I still welcome thoughts on perception because I like

I want my works to create emotion. What those emotions are, however, are determined by the viewer. Everyone has had different experiences in their lives which change the way they feel about imagery, colors, and basically everything! I welcome

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Shy Guy

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Pink Rhino knowing what aspects people like or dislike. Of

meaning or figures is how they are supposed to, just

course I will explain the original meaning if the

as how I created them was how I was supposed to

viewer would like to know, but I prefer to hear their

create them.

interpretation first. In my mind, my works cannot be

Whether or not they align is of no real significance.

misinterpreted. However the viewer interprets the

What is important to me is the connection or

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Gayffiti

M4M

emotion that viewers feel towards the pieces.

Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "artists's role differs depending on which part of the

Your identity greatly influences the choices you make when creating works, and as you have remarked in your artist's statement, you draw a lot from contemporary LGBT culture and influences.

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world theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in. It depends on the political system they aree living under": how does the relationship between your identity and the NYC scene influence

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LoL

City Guy

your artistic research? In particular, do you think that your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment?

actually are. My identity influences everything I’ve ever

As I’ve mentioned, we’ve all had different experiences throughout our lives. This is what makes us who we

inspiration from dating apps in the gay community.

created whether or not it is directly apparent. Specifically with my recent 9 piece series, I drew Many users choose to show revealing pictures rather

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Red or White

Dog Lover

than image of their faces. In my works, I replaced

shows how one aspect of my life can be found in my artwork.

the heads of figures with objects symbolizing things that may be found within profiles.

As my work is continually being created, it is also continually changing. Things happen on a day to day basis and my influence my work, or give me new

This series is more directly connected to my identity within the LGBT community than other works but

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Who I Am

Indecisive

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7. Self portrait MEtal

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ideas. I live and work in the here and now and my artworks reflect that.

that was said in the dream. They may give a little more insight into the creation of the works and underlying theme.

You draw a lot from your dreams: at the same time your artworks seem to speak of reality: how does everyday life's experience fuel your creative process?

How do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks?

I draw influence from everywhere. Living in New York City surrounds me with visual stimulation. Speaking with people, working on projects, listening to music: all of these things play a role in my process. Sometimes I see or hear something that just triggers an idea for a new series. If you think about it, everyday activities influence what you dream about. So in turn, even the pieces I create from my dreams are indirectly created from the previous day’s events as well.

Emotion is the main thing I want people to remember. I feel If I can create a work that resonates with someone, I was successful. In person I tend to be reserved and a little shy, so my work is how I want to initiate the communicate with the audience. I do love when people ask questions about my work or process because I want them to understand what really goes into creating each piece. Once they realize that the work is spray paint (with or without other mediums) they always ask how I get so much detail into the pieces and how long it takes to create. These are both strictly based on the stencils. My process is very time consuming, but it’s how I reach the best results with the expression of my work.

Your artworks have often short titles, that often conveys subtle message and that allow you to clarify the message while maintaining the element of ambiguity: how do you go about naming your work ? In particular, is important for you to tell something that might walk the viewers through their visual experience?

We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Ken. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?

I tend to finish the work before I start thinking of titles. This lets me view the work and come up with an appropriate representation of the overall piece. The titles I choose do try to allude to the ideas without giving too much away. As I mentioned, I want viewers to interpret my works for themselves so the titles can seem a little cryptic. Giving these little hints is very satisfying but sometimes hard to accomplish. There have been works completed for months before I came up with a title for them. One thing that I like to incorporate is a sort of word-play or association. An example is Self-portrait (MEtal), which brings a little bit of my dad-joke humor personality into light.

It was a pleasure discussing this all with you! I have a list of dream paintings ready to create and continually add new dreams when they occur. This is an ongoing series and theme, and I really enjoy the creations that come from it. As far as future ideas, I want to explore other mediums and add them into my current process. I mentioned earlier that I want to incorporate collage, so we’ll see where that takes me and how I’ll combine it with spray paint. I’ve also been toying with some mosaic work, so I’m sure you’ll see a few new medium combinations in the future!

In some cases certain words or phrases stick out to me during my dreams. LX Hush for example was titled as such because that was the model name of the car in my dream. In this case, the title was determined before I created the piece. Other works I create from dreams may be titled after something

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Peripheral ARTeries meets

Sylvia Sussman Lives and works in Berkeley, California USA My art is inspired by nature. My childhood, spent in Washington State, has influenced my contemplative attachment to the landscape, playing in the woods- my attachment to trees. In my Berkeley garden I plant and care for trees. Over the years, my work has referred to the weather and the sky, to wetlands, mudflats and grasses, ponds, fields and trees; more abstractly to the way in which landscape can affect our emotional states and lift us into a wider sense of being in the world and a place where time is space. My use of the horizon as a structural element speaks to the role it plays in our sense of space. I paint in layers of oil on unstretched canvas and oil on paper. I like to see the rough edges of canvas or paper as part of the work. I have also used watercolor, pastels, acrylics, sumi ink. As a printmaker, I use both monotype and intaglio processes. I regularly draw from the figure; figures sometimes appear in my paintings. Drawing has become more and more important in my process; I use twigs and sticks to draw with ink or into paint, and thick graphite as a way to draw into paint. I place myself within a tradition of abstraction which draws upon organic rather than geometric form; sometimes my work directly refers to nature and sometimes focuses on forms taken from nature. A quote from Theres Rohan referring to my online exhibition,“Meridian StudioVisits” (12/2014-3/2015), which she curated, puts some of my more recent work succinctly: “Undoubtedly, Sussman’s new work is still inspired by the natural world but she lets us in only peripherally as now her focus revolves around the form – aesthetic form.” My most recent series refer to the way in which trees form portals as well as to my experience of trees in varying weather and atmospheres, singularly and as forests. I contemplate their forms as calligraphic marks. My response to nature has been a source of excitement, reverie and comfort. I draw upon this response. I am affected by the environments of my life: what I stare at, what I move within. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

http://sylviasussman.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of introductory questions. You have a solid formal training and after your studies in Painting at The San Francisco Art Institute, you attended several workshops in Printmaking and - more recently - in Chinese

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Sylvia Sussman and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit

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Forrest Soundings 17-0 monotype 22” x 15 1/4”. 2017

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Blue Winter Soundings triptych 17-1,2,3. oil on paper 22’’ X 30” each 2017 (photo by by Sibila Savage)

Brush Painting with Doris Chen: how did those formative experiences influence your evolution as an artist and help you to develop your attitude to experiment? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum due to your studies of Sociology direct the trajectory of your current artistic research?

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Sylvia Sussman: Actually my “formal training” in art was minimal but I had excellent teachers at the San Francisco Art Institute where I was allowed to take painting classes and sit in on drawing from the model, without enrolling for a degree. I also began to teach in their Humanities dept. By the time I began my painting studies I had

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earned a PhD in Sociology and was working part time as the Co-Director of a psychology research project. I had always leaned towards art. I began my formal training with a summer session at SFAI and continued there for 2 years focussing on oil painting. My instructors gave me basic knowledge and encouraged my work. I instinctively used color and shape

to create form. Their approach was to give students the space to discover their own way while insinuating suggestions that encouraged learning. I had previously begun to work in watercolor, copying from a very small book of works by Spanish Byzantine painters. I had recently

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been to the museum in Barcelona which showed that body of work. So my first paintings were in watercolor in that style: the perspective is flat, size and placement of the image revealed its import. The colors were bright and clear. This is not unlike the Persian miniaturists’ work, where size and placement reveal a reality that is beautifully described in Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red where he compares this approach to an encroaching popularity, with the Sultan, of 3 point perspective newly seen in Venetian art and causing a revolution among the miniaturists. As westerners we tend to think that 3 pt.perspective is equal to “reality” whereas Pamuk’s novel relates the nature of a different sense of reality. As you point out, my studies in Sociology had an impact, though I was already trending towards a broader view of reality. My father had a large library, including art books. While studying at the Art Institute, I used their library, studying the work of a large range of European and American artists. And, I developed a fondness for Chinese landscape painting which became a strong influence on me. Multiple realities revealed from the many painting traditions and styles offered freedom to go in any direction. Printmaking, particularly the monotype process is painterly and invites spontaneity. Using very different instruments in order to make marks freed me from exclusive use of the brush and opened me to an even more spontaneous method of working than I had already developed. As I had long used oil paints on quite large canvases, the act of painting was very physical for me, a kind of dance; the image revealing itself as I worked and coming from the physical process of painting until it felt right. Thus the way monotype invited spontaneity was natural to

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me. What this printing process did was increase the surprise element and thus broaden my choice of images and marks while maintaining my approach of moving the medium around until it felt right. As with oil paint, the monotype process allows for changes to be made by adding to or reworking the plate and sending the print back through the press. I host a weekly, peer, drawing group in my studio. I began to use twigs and Sumi ink to draw from the model—tanother freeing element. A fellow artist suggested I take a Chinese brush/drawing/caligraphy class This was a good experience and I think it has made a difference, bringing drawing more fully into my painting process. Becoming familiar with the work of Cy Twombly emphasized this trend for me. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article has at once impressed us for the way you sapiently combined element from reality with captivating abstract sensitiveness, to provide the viewers with such a multilayered visual experience: when walking our readers through your usual workflow and process, we would like to ask you if you think that there is a central idea that connects all your works. Sylvia Sussman: From childhood on, I have been deeply involved with the natural world, how it feels and how I feel within it. My memories of childhood involve the feeling of immersion; time and space linked, bringing me a feeling of wholeness. This feeling included a wide expanse — free and light; as well as a refuge when I was sad. So the weather, the

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Portals 1 oil on paper. 24”X19”. 2018 (photo by by Sibila Savage)

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Photo by Ruth Ekland

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Blue Winter 1 oil on paper. 30’’ x 22” 2017 (photo by by Sibila Savage)

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grass (we used to lie in the tall wild grass and I pretended to be tiny, so the grass was huge), the local woods, the sky all furnished my internal world. Coming from New York city at the age of 6, I was enthralled by the vastness of the land, the prairies and fields I could see from the train window, and then, the sky of Washington State was large and encompassing. I have never lost my place in the natural world. As my painting matured I could add more elements, grasses and mudflats, for instance, became a focus of my work. Again, this came from my physical experience: walking my dogs along the bay trails, through the mudflats and marshes. As my skill increased, particularly from my experience of drawing and printmaking, I began to bring trees into my work (see on my web site, “Branching “and “Winter Tree"s as well as various monotypes titled “Branching”). When I discovered thick graphite sticks I was lead to make large arcs with my arm and the texture I got from pulling the graphite through the oil paint was very exciting. This lead to a period of work in which I abstracted the feeling of trees in expanses of white oil paint (see the series on my site titled Winter Bones, Duo, Phantom Forrest, From Chabot Park). Using twigs to draw into paint became a dominant part of my process —see “Sentinels”, “Indigo” and “Piano” in The section of my website: Paintings-Oil on Paper. The monotypes: “Morning Forrest” and “Evening Forrest” show the dominant use of sticks to create form. My discovery of various tools and what can be done with them has lead to new forms in my work while l maintaining my themes of being in nature. I once curated a show for several artists whose work focus on the natural world—my title for

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the show “Nature, For Instance” reveals how I believe that the natural world is one, not the only, deep source for art. It has been my source through all of my discoveries in instruments and techniques taking me ever wider into what I can express about my feeling of being in the world, what I see and what I feel. You are a versatile artist and your cross disciplinary practice includes oil, acrylics, watercolor, pastels and sumi ink, as well as monotype and intaglio processes in your printmaking practice. What does direct your artistic research to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? How do you select an artistic discipline in order to explore a particular aspect of your artistic journey? Sylvia Sussman: Initialy,chance. I started out conservative, sticking to oil on canvas, pastels and watercolor on paper. I was slow to try new ways but was pulled and pushed by my artist friends. Drawn by a friend, I began to expand, trying acrylic on paper which worked well for me. However, when I tried using oil on paper I dropped the acrylic entirely. I admired artists’ drawings but did not try to use pencil for years, thinking I could not draw. Invited to join a drawing group, I went with pastels so it felt more like painting. Then I decided I needed to learn how to draw with pencil and to try to render the figure. I eventually was able to do that. Then I became intrigued by a colleagues’ drawings using ink and twigs. I tried and was happy to work freely with the twigs and not mind the mess created by dripping ink. This freedom as well as my introduction to monotype printing, again through a friend, lead me to be more free with my oil painting process —as I have described above. Now, discovering new approaches, tools and media

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Crows in Flight Diptych oil on paper 24” x 39” 2017 (photo by by Sibila Savage)

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Echoes 2 (photo by by Sibila Savage)

Echoes of a Forgotten Past 2

oil on unstretched canvas. 47” X 30” 2018

oil on unstretched canvas. 47" X 30". 2018

are no longer a stumbling block for me. I go by feeling as to which medium to use each time I begin a series of work.

particular, how important does spontaneity play in your work? Sylvia Sussman: I rely on spontaneity for the work to unfold, as I have described above. However, when I stand back I make decisions based upon—What? That is the question: I do not think about geometry. However, I have a very strong sense of balance, such that if something feels wrongly placed I am uncomfortable, so I move things around until I

Your artworks are marked with such a rigorous sense of geometry, to create such a coherent combination between sense of freedom and unique aesthetics: do you conceive your works instinctively or do you methodically elaborate your pieces? In

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(photo by by Sibila Savage)

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often include your memories, elements of the past, that you seem to turn into new components and experiences. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, your childhood spent in Washington State influencing your contemplative attachment to the landscape, and your life in California and England later introduced you to very different atmospheres and light. A work of art can be considered a combination between understanding reality and hinting at the unknown: how do you consider the role of memory playing within your artistic research? And how does everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? Sylvia Sussman: I think I addressed part of this above, under question 2. I addressed memory to some degree—in that I seek feelings that I had as a child—yet, as I change through the years, new experiences become a part of that repertoire of feeling memories. Exposure to art I am not familiar with has affected my relationship to paint, to making marks, and perhaps, even to the landscape, to nature. I started with fixed ideas as to what I like in art, but viewing art I am not familiar with or seeing works I have only previously seen in books has had a large effect on me. Sometimes being impressed with one painting can move me in a new direction or to work with different colors.

Simply Trees monotype.

24”x16". 2017 feel settled. As long as I feel uncomfortable, anxious, unsure, I need to keep working on the piece. Sometimes I sense it is just right—-I feel settled. Sometimes I am unsure, see nothing I want to do to the piece —so I leave it alone. After a while I will either see what I need to do or I will realize it is complete and accept it.

From a another angle: I have always loved trees and played in the forrest as child, carrying those memories. Yet, for a long while, I did not feel capable of drawing a tree or depicting the feeling I have about trees and the forrest. Somehow this changed and I

Trees are recurrent figures in your imagery and it's important to remark that your artworks

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Inland Sea oil on paper 26” x 40” 2016

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winter. So there is another aspect of influence on my work.

became able to draw a tree/ more importantly, I began to accept the way I drew trees. I think that it was the monotype process that allowed trees to surface in my work and I have been obsessed with them since. This affair with trees as well as with using twigs to draw has focussed me on line. In my early paintings of landscape line was expressed in the form of grasses and at the horizon. You can see in the monotype: Simply Trees how the line has changed from the simplicity of grasses to the curvilinear and even shaky forms of trees.

At the present, I am very focused the the trees I can see from my windows: the different light brought about by the time of day and the changing forms through the seasons . I have stared at them, taken photos of them and sketched them throughout the years. We like the way you artworks convey such a stimulating combination between figurative elements - as wetlands, mudflats and grasses, ponds, fields- and captivating abstract feeling, whose background - as in the interesting Forrest Soundings - creates such an oniric atmosphere: how would you consider the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?

The recent paintings: “Echoes of a Forgotten Past” made me think of Persian and Indian miniatures—perhaps the colors, perhaps playing with the form and color of the —are they leaves, blossoms? It was looking at the works when finished (there are 2 of these) that I felt the connection with the historic miniatures—it is a deep feeling and I cannot say why or what lead me there. Looking at my two “Echoes” paintings (on my web home page, and you have an image of “Echoes 2”), I cannot say exactly what the echo is—-the indigo blue lines, painted with twigs, have their origins in my tree paintings yet this is not a tree—-unless it is a form of the tree of life—-for the oval shape in the center, outlined by the lines, is more like an egg or a womb. When I finished Echoes 1 and 2 and sat looking at these paintings I felt a strong sense of well being.. I find that I have more understanding of a painting after it is complete than in the process or prior to the working. My most recent paintings (not yet on my website) also focus on trees; now the color of blue has taken over: This is “From the Dark” and evolves from an old sketch of leafless trees I see from my window in SPECIAL ISSUE

Sylvia Sussman: In my response to your question 5 above, I mentioned how what I see draws me in and becomes a part of my being. So, as what I see and move within becomes internalized, I suppose it is digested, and when it —the world out there, appears in my artwork it is already a part of my internal experience and has become separate from the actual visual world. I rarely sketch the landscape and my sketches of trees become something other when that experience (the sketching and the seeing) is internalized. I am sometimes amazed when viewers of my work tell me that they are seeing a place that they have known in their lives. I think it is the feeling of the place rather than the specific visual image that

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Out of the Dark oil on unstretched canvas 38’' x 30” 2019

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Trees of the Field exhibition photo by Danny Benitez

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Forrest Soundings 17-1, 2, 3, 4 monotypes. 22” x 15 1/4" each. 2017

they are responding to. So the viewer also sees from an experiential place. You use the word Oneiric—which refers to a dream state. This does seem to be the right word and certainly applies to “Echoes of a Distant Past” 1 and 2 and to the “Echoes” 1 and 2 series as well as more broadly to my work. Yet it is not dream as in “fantasy”. I don’t think my works are fantasies. The “Forrest Soundings” series refer, I think, to a deep

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response to the mysterious quality —the density and the multiple sensations of marks and movement and color. “Soundings” refers to the measuring of depth; usually of the sea but can refer more widely. It is an evocative word/thought and has emerged over the years as a way of describing some very different series of my work. The word has a lot of meaning for me. So there you have an element that refers to meaning that is beyond the visual. We are talking about the journey

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between reality and the unknown and in a sense the answer to your next question.

in a specific artwork in order to achieve such brilliant results?

We have really appreciated the vibrancy of the delicate nuances of that mark out your artistic production: in particular, we like the way your artworks show that vivacious tones are not indispensable in order to create tension and dynamics: how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include

Sylvia Sussman: This is hard to answer, other than to say I have probably answered it already. However to try and focus on color nuance—mostly it comes down to feeling. For instance the paintings from the winter of 2017 are primarily in variations of deep blue/indigo —and that was a dark winter for us—the political atmosphere and the climate

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Horizon as Structure. exhibition. (Villa Montalvo) by Mike Cooper

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Tree Portrait 1 oil on unstretched canvas. 38” x 30”. 2019

then grey (graphite color) and white—-feeling a sense of freedom in the expanse of white, with a few marks of indigo or graphite color. Thus my work may have become simpler and in a different sense more spacious—space

were burdensome to myself and my friends and my brother had recently died. While I had always been taken with color and my landscapes show that; I had in more recent years been taken fully by green and white and

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revealed by absence rather than by expanses of vibrant color. Yet, my attachment to color remains, as in Forrest Soundings and in my recent small oils on paper, of the forests (these are not yet photographed). Color and feeling are intertwined for me. I see all colors as beautiful and a resource for my work. I rarely work with primary colors and tend towards more subtle color mixtures —I suppose it is that they are more textured. Texture/feel is very important to me and trumps the straight forwardly visual.

Photo by Ruth Ekland

for me, sometimes, to learn something about the work I have done. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Sylvia. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?

We sometimes tend to ignore the fact that a work of art is a physical artifact with tactile qualities: how do you consider the relation between the abstract nature of your creative process and the physical aspect of your daily practice as an artist? Sylvia Sussman: For me it is all physical, the visual, for me, is physical and tactile. So painting is a way of sending my thinking and feeling self into the physical world in a coordinated way.

Sylvia Sussman: Right now, I have been working small in oil paint and graphite, on multimedia drawing paper. I have been exploring the sense of deep space evident when looking into a forest. At the same time, I have been focussing on portraits of trees, single or in small groups—here the elements are the variations in line/movement and color revealing the character and the dance. I have a large garden, many trees, large and small. I also have the neighboring trees I see from my window. The lines and textures created during fall and winter have been a continuous experience for me. And the colors change at different times of day and in different weather.

Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of solo and group exhibitions, including your recent participation to The New East Bay Open Studios: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks? Sylvia Sussman: Those who respond to my work seem to enter the feeling of the work such as the open spaces, the colors—the physical properties, the places they would like to find themselves within. They sometimes relive memories of places and feelings. I am also delighted by the response of other artists whose work I appreciate. I enjoy hearing what viewers of my work feel and I appreciate our conversations. Open studios and exhibitions provide an opportunity to share my work and

I thank you for your thoughtful questions and the opportunity to think about what I am doing. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Peripheral ARTeries meets

Aaron Deshields

Lives and works in Detroit, MI, USA

Catastrophic activity has given form to the environment in which we exist. I am curious about how catastrophe affects structure, disorder in the environment, and how humans attempt to regulate systems that are outside of our control. I create sculptures that explore my fascination with catastrophe, and potential energy. The embodiment of energy in objects and the memory of the material in which they are made is crucial to understanding the work that I create.They are vessels of my own physical exertion and attempt to capture the moment in which catastrophic events occur and their aftermath.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

incubation period for combining concepts into objects. Going to Appalachian State University allowed me to study areas outside of art such as Sustainability and Geology, while still directing my focus on a creative practice. The faculty encouraged us to explore areas such as foundry, fabrication, kinetic objects, and time based media; however my love for metalwork was solidified when I was given an opportunity to take an introductory Blacksmithing class at Penland School of Crafts. Getting to use a machine such as a power hammer to sculpt hot metal changed my life. I was captivated by this process, and I loved it because it achieved an organic quality that welding and fabrication never could.

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Aaron and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit http://www.adeshieldsiron.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production, and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BFA in Sculpture from Appalachian State University, you had the chance to traveled to Detroit, MI as an artist in residence at Fortress Studios. How did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does your cultural substratum due to your everyday life's experience in Detroit direct the trajectory of your current artistic research?

The next challenge was trying to secure a practice outside of school. Finding the facilities to forge steel is difficult due to the overhead costs of industrial space. However, a city built on industry such as Detroit, has the infrastructure and capacity needed for these processes. Naturally, the residents radiate a

My formal training in sculpture acted as an

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experiences and narratives created by humanity, I continued to come back to the association with catastrophe.

capability to make, and that is what drew my attention to Fortress Studios. Living in Detroit forces one to acknowledge the real impact that industry, wealth disparity, racism, and capitalism have on communities. It also forces you to acknowledge how much these institutions have a global impact as well. I would be negligent to not point out the resilience of the residents, and the power that communities have to provide for themselves.

My interest in Potential Energy came from visual representations in earth science textbooks. I was drawn to the aesthetic of the graphs, and through analysis could begin to understand the concepts represented. It was clear to me that Potential Energy and Catastrophe were directly related, and I wanted to represent that through form. We have particularly appreciated the way Obsidian Vault shows such a captivating flow of energy, as well as balanced combination between rigorous sense of geometry and abstract sensitiveness. New York City based artist Lydia Dona once stated that in order to make art today one has to reevaluate the conceptual language behind the mechanism of art making itself: do you create your works gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes?

All of these experiences have greatly impacted my own thinking, and challenged my worldview which is necessary for growth. For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected Exploding Earth: Subduction Zone, a stimulating art project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your your insightful exploration of catastrophe and potential energy is the way you provide the viewers with such a multilayered visual experience. When walking our readers through the genesis of Exploding Earth: Subduction Zone, would you tell us how do you develop the initial idea?

The Obsidian Vault series represent serendipity and playfulness in my practice. Despite the brutal aesthetic of these sculptures, my approach to creating these cast iron works differs greatly from my forged steel pieces. I collect foam packing waste from appliances and other goods, cut them down, and begin to collage the pieces into a rearranged sculptural form. I then take sand molds off the foam forms, remove the material, and cast liquid metal into the negative space. This process feels indirect to me, as the true labor comes in the furnace operation that melts the iron rather than sculpting the form.

My experiences growing up in North Carolina had a direct impact on my fascination with the landscape. Exploring the terrain of the Appalachian mountains piqued my curiosity about the formation of these structures. I began trying to mentally picture what the collision of tectonic plates forming mountain ranges looked like. Imagining the immense release of energy, and relating it to the

My forged work is more methodical. It takes a strong understanding of how various tools

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make marks and move mass. In contrast to casting, the labor of forging goes directly into the material.

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Photographer and sculptor Zoe Leonard once stated, "the objects that we leave behind hold the marks and the sign of our use: like

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archeological findings, they reveal so much about us". Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d love to ask you about the qualities of the materials that you include in

your artworks: in particular, how important is for you the notion of hysteresis of the materials that you use on a symbolic aspect?

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The memory of material, particularly regarding forged sculpture, acts as a catalog of decisions performed by the blacksmith. The concept of hysteresis applies to these forms as they undergo multiple phase changes at a molecular level through multiple heats.

also very relatable to the human experience. We sometimes tend to ignore the fact that a work of art is a physical artefact with tactile qualities: how do you how do you consider the relation between the abstract nature of your creative process and the physical aspect of your daily practice as an artist?

I utilize force and pressure to transform a mass, while trying to work it within a particular heat range. Steel develops increased plasticity with temperature and has a number of visual and physical clues that alert the smith of when more heat is needed.

For me they are interrelated. I think about my sculptures as challenges. I develop an idea or design conceptually and loosely render in my sketchbook or on the ground of the workspace in soapstone. I then have to problem solve and engineer a series of steps that my body must go through in order to achieve my intended outcome.

Once the steel has returned to its normalized state, it behaves as it has in the past. An assessment of the work determines whether the cycle must continue or if the work is complete. We like the way Unraveling-Reconvening conveys such a stimulating combination between tactile feature and captivating abstract feeling, to create such a dreamlike atmosphere: how would you consider the role of abstraction playing within your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work? Trying to make the determination between abstraction and representation is something that I have struggled with. I refer to the work that I make as a representation of concepts that seem abstract, but are directly related to earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s formation. My work is not representational in a literal sense, nor is it abstract in itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s genesis. For that reason, I have stopped trying to differentiate between the two.

When designing a new work, I must also take into account the ways in which I will need help, whether that be through the use of machines or human power. This always introduces another challenge; which is communicating with your assistance what you need from them in order to execute an idea. Your artworks invite the viewers to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning? And in particular, how open would you like your artworks to be understood? I would hope that viewers could interpret my work as freely as possible. There are many narratives that I instill within these sculptures, and often the dialogue I have with myself about them is multi-faceted.

I refer to pieces like Unraveling-Reconvening as symbols. A braid unraveling and rearranging itself is a metaphor for structure falling into disorder briefly, and establishing itself into an organic formation. It is a concept that is applicable to nature, but is

Each piece touches on a variation of my interests and motivations for making art. Despite the aesthetics and materials that I

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utilize in my work, these sculptures are not rigid. They can and should be open. That is why I utilize more ambiguous forms and try to make my sculpture devoid of humanity in its physical representation. Your artworks challenge the viewers to explore realms of the imagination, how do you consider the tension between the real and the imagined playing within your artistic research? I have always been drawn to works that created spaces that were loosely based in reality, but only due to their representation of gravity. Everything else is subject to the imagination. Some artists that I draw inspiration from who I think accomplish this are Michael Heizer, Lee Bontecou, Anselm Kiefer, and more historically Piranesi’s “prison” etchings. All of these artists utilize density and weight in their work that make one aware of the subterranean, but strive for ascension. The reality of my own work is in the sources that I draw inspiration from. Geologic formations are undeniably real. Where I utilize imagination is in how I choose to construct forms inspired by the earth’s processes. As someone who has never witnessed a catastrophic earthquake, or volcanic eruption, I construct my ideas from narratives, stories, and myths that are generated by humans. How do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks? In particular, how do you consider the role of emerging online technosphere in creating new links between artists and worldwide audience? Technology allows us to reach audiences far greater than our immediate communities.

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What this creates is a global exchange of ideas at an expedited rate. The most beautiful aspect of this global community is realizing the overlap of ideas that many people have throughout the

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world. One could take a competitive stance towards this, attempting to assert prestige or dominance; but for me, I am amazed and inspired when I see people making work about

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comradery despite physical boundaries, and facilitates communication. However, we should have some awareness that like all things, there can be detrimental qualities to how we utilize technology and its impact on mental health and social relationships. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Aaron. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? I appreciate the thorough and challenging questions about my practice. Currently I am further developing the Obsidian Vault and Exploding Earth series of sculptures. I am thinking about how to make work that both utilizes and resists gravity to create negative space within my work, and how scale has an impact on itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presentation. Creating sculptural books, has also been something that I would like to return to in my work; and am developing techniques and content for how to best execute that. Otherwise, I am just looking for as many outlets to expand my practice as possible, whether that be through grants, residencies, shows, and research.

similar topics or in similar manners. It makes me feel like I am not alone, which has been the perpetuated stereotype of artists for centuries. It also allows for artists to find

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Peripheral ARTeries meets

Junyi Liu Lives and works in New York City, USA

I am interested in metaphors that reflect the inner condition of human being. Women in the society have strong insecurity that makes them seek different ways to feel safe. Some turned to luxuries, some turned to sexual pleasure (represented by raw meat in the paintings), some turned to childhood memories. They surround themselves with comforts to avoid getting hurt. In my works the women are beautiful, and they even seem to feel at ease. Yet within they are still fragile, and lonely and confused. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

You have a solid formal training and after having attended the University of Illinois at Springfield, you received your BFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does your cultural substratum due to your Chinese roots direct the trajectory of your current artistic research?

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Junyi and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.junyiliuart.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production, and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background.

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Sinking, Oil on linen, 20 x 30, 2019

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exposed to much art, especially contemporary art. I had no idea what was going on in the art world nowadays. In Chinese art workshops, I learned some academic drawing skills. Everyone around me has the same style and subject matter. There was not much creativity allowed. Then I came to the U.S., and the education methods here shocked me. People were treating me with a lot more respect in general, and giving me the freedom to explore my artistic interests. In Maryland, I feel refreshing and excited to be surround by so many students who share the same passion for art, and making wildly different work. Art school can be very stressful and confusing, but overall I am thankful for the experience of being in an open-minded and diverse community. I was able to experiment freely, knowing that mistakes and failures are acceptable.

performances The Sacrifice and Installation White Box. My work is influenced by all my past experience: good and bad, old and recent. Though it’s weird to admit, my experience has shaped me into who I am. I am not myself if you took away the memory of any given year of my life. I have been searching for a place in the world that I belong to, both physically and psychologically. This searching process has driven my work to evolve over the years. You are a versatile artist and your multidisciplinary practice encompasses Installation, Performance, Drawing and Painting. We have appreciated the way the results of your artistic inquiry convey such a coherent combination between emotional intuition and a rigorous aesthetics. The works that we have selected for this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries have at once impressed us for the way they provide the viewers with such a multilayered visual experience: when walking our readers through your usual setup and process, would you tell us how do you usually develop the initial ideas for your artworks?

Meanwhile, I realized more and more that I am Asian, a noncitizen, a nonnative speaker and a “foreigner”. To many Americans, I am exotic, an outsider, and someone that wouldn’t be treated seriously. Sometimes I feel that I am less of a person because of my skin color and nationality. What’s even worse is I am a woman! The frustration has been reflected in my artwork, such as the meat paintings,

For me, 2D, 3D and 4D art forms are not so different. Usually, a certain scene came into my mind, such as a 169

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In Dreams I Open My Eyes, Oil on linen, 24x36, 2019

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I Will Learn To Breathe Underwater, oil on linen, 20x30, 2019

female body covered my vibrant raw meat, or red paint spilled on a pure white background. Something about the visuals hooked me. The images were strong, beautiful, poetic, and suggestive. Then, the single images

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started to evolve, expand and move around, until they became complete ideas of paintings /installations /performances. Till this point, what I wanted to do was 172

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still just in my head. When I was ready to move on, I would start to take photo references or to prepare the materials I need. Sometimes it only stakes a few days, some times a few months.

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instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes? I like to visualize the finished work before I start. Scale, composition, and color theme are all taken into account. As soon as I start, I keep things organized and keep track of the steps, so that I can come back without problems. This is determined by the nature of representation painting. Sometimes I have to make adjustments, or to start over. I will do any necessary work to make sure Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m happy with the outcome. We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances that mark out your artworks, and we like the way it creates tension and dynamics in the interesting Red Handkerchief. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork and in particular, how do you develop a texture? Color is a critical element in my paintings. I like to explore warm /cool and desaturated /saturated contrasts. Red Handkerchief was done from life. To emphasize the warmth of the raw bacon the girl was holding, I made the background color a bit cooler. There are only two big masses in this imageâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the hand with bacon and the background. Simplicity makes things easy to read. There are variations and details in the skin tone and the bacon, but overall, the

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Blue Like The Moon/ When You Watch Me I Watch You Too, Oil on panel, 8x10, 2018

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Neon, oil on linen, 14x11in, 2018

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tones are united and soft, compared to other works such as Meat Bath. Meat Bath depicts a girl lying in a bathtub, looking out at the viewers, while some raw meat is “dripping” out of the edge of the bathtub. To make her and the meat “pop”, I painted the surroundings flat and clean. The background and the foreground have different color temperatures, but similar values. Together they serve the main subject. I added more chroma to the meat to achieve the vibrant, fresh look. The edges are crisp and defined, especially the outline of her body. All these factors help the whole image look modern. The nuances exit in the turning of the form, such as the foreshortened arm and soft cheeks. They are just as important as the bold color design, because without them the painting will no longer be as naturalistic and aesthetically satisfying as I want it to be. One of the big reasons I painted meat was because of its texture. I found the marble like pattern on raw meat very fascinating. Raw meat is raw beauty from nature, just like we are gifted beautiful naked bodies from nature. To capture the texture I bought meat from the market and did studies of it. Every time I would discover something I didn’t see before in meat. As for other texture, I trust the same method: observation. 177

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On the table, Oil on panel, 12x16, 2018

Meat Bath, Oil on linen, 16x20, 2018

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Dress Me Up With Love, oil on linen, 18x24", 2019 SPECIAL ISSUE

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to the painting (the woman). A bright, mysterious blue light shines in the dark on the young woman’s nude body. Half immersed in the bathtub water, she looks straight into the eyes of the viewers. On the one hand, she holds a certain kind of power, and it looks like she is seducing the viewers. On the other hand, she is in a vulnerable situation, and it’s unclear what her next step will be. Is it her preference to be in a room this dark, or someone else arranged this? Is she going to stay in the bathtub or stand up and leave?

My eyes are my best friends. To understand a surface, I watch how it absorb and bounce off the light. Then, I will be able to produce the illusion of this surface on canvas, using just oil paint. I like to paint thinly, and I found it more rewarding than to create a texture with flashy stokes of thick paint. Women are a central theme in your artistic research: in your artworks women are marked out with such a peaceful beauty, and we have particularly appreciated the way you combined sense of ease and fragility. Why did you choose to focus an important part of your artistic production on this theme? Moreover, do you think that your being a woman provides your artistic research with some special value ?

Neon isn’t like other paintings I did, because the woman’s eyes are not in the picture frame. The viewer’s gaze can go straight on her beautiful lips, neck and hair, without any shame. The changing pink, yellow and orange lights are just like people’s gazes on her skin. The colors add to her charm, yet we cannot see the inside of her. Does she know she is being stared at? Does she like that? Is she someone close to the viewers? What is she thinking right now?

Being a woman is not easy. I have experienced hard times in my life due to my gender and I am still experiencing it. I believe it is crucial for people to realize the inner struggles and complex emotions women have. I try to communicate that in a subtle visual language.

In both paintings it is uncertain how the women feel. At the first glance many of my paintings are of pretty women. One can feel free to assume that those women feel great. However, there is no way to be certain. They could be troubled by something. They might want to tell a story, but you can’t hear

When You Watch Me I Watch You Too and Neon both used unusual colors. The first painting is small, only 8x10 inches, encouraging the viewers to come close 183

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Beauty Won't Hurt You, Oil on linen , 24x18, 2019

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anything. They might not want to see you but pretending it’s fine. Their facial expressions are fairly natural-- hey don’t look sad or happy or angry or scared. Intentionally or unintentionally, the emotions are concealed, and the viewers can only try to find some clues in the surroundings and guess what’s going on in their mind, and what are the paintings “about”. I cannot image not being a woman, since it is all I know. All my works are based on my understanding of life as a woman. Naturally, it became a big interest point of my art. Marked out with such a powerful narrative drive, your artworks are rich of evocative symbols — as the way raw meat represents sexual pleasure in your interesting Meat Me By The Pool and On the table — and metaphors that reflect the inner condition of human being. In this sense, we daresay that you art practice also responds to German photographer Andreas Gursky when he underlined that Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind. You seem to urge your spectatorship to challenge their cultural categories: how important are symbols in your work? And in particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? I like to have historical references in my SPECIAL ISSUE

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Meat Me By The Pool, oil on canvas, 16x20, 2017

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SPECIAL ISSUE Untouchable I, Oil on linen, 12x16, 2019

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works sometimes. Meat Me By the Pool for example, is an obvious reference to the famous controversial painting Portrait of Marie-Louis O’Murphy by Francois Boucher.

creative process? Memory is something no one can escape, especially artists. My experiences have been inevitably reflected in my work. I loved stuffed animals my whole life. I used to have a lot of them, and they gave me comfort when I was alone. Dress Me Up With Love and Beauty Won’t Hurt You portray a young woman lying among many of her colorful stuffed animals.

Raw meat is the flesh of animals, when put right next to human flesh, it becomes a symbol of human bodies. However it is not necessarily my goal to let everyone understand the symbolic aspect of my work. Many people told me the meat looked delicious and it made them hungry. Or if they were vegetarian, the meat made them sick. I’m okay as long as the works make people feel “something”. The messages in my works aren’t obvious. Rather, my works are usually very open ended. I’m open to different interpretations from the viewers based on their own experience and receptivity.

Eyes closed, it seems that she is asleep. After the Meat Joy series, my works have lean towards daily life. I have painted a woman standing in the elevator (Sinking), sitting in a café, or lying in bed. Daily life is a good resource for me, and familiar scenes are more relatable for the audience. You are an established artist: you recently received the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and over the years you have extensively exhibited your artworks, including your recent participation to Painting the Figure Now, at Zhou B Art Center, in Chicago, IL. We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you how importance has for you the feedback of the

That being said, I still get excited when some one happened to understand the works exactly as I do. We have particularly appreciated the way Dress Me Up With Love seem to turn your memories and references to childhood into new components and experiences: how do you consider the role of memory playing within your artistic research? And how does everyday life's experience fuel your

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ideas, and make connections with other artists. Instagram, especially, is playing a very important role. It has so many users, which is a great opportunity for any artist to be seen and heard. On the other hand, it is more and more difficult for one artist to get attention on Instagram and social media platform in general.

viewers: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience and what do you like your viewers take away from your artworks? I always welcome feedback. Some of the suggestions have inspired new works. Instead of a moral lesson, I hope my viewers to experience the art piece.

We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Junyi. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?

They might be interested by the rendering of the portrait, the tone of the scene, or the memories the piece evokes. I also hope my work can encourage people to express themselves, weather though visual art, music, writing, dancing or other means. Direct relationship with the audience in a physical is the most important one, in order to snatch the spirit of a work of Art. However, as the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to the online realm increases: how do you consider the role of emerging online technosphere — and platforms as Instagram — in creating new links between artists and worldwide audience?

I’m keeping working on the painting series called Lonely Together, which includes some of the paintings we discussed above. Many of them are already being show in galleries and museums. I’m excited to have many different models posing for me for the upcoming works. Multiple figures painting has so much potential, and I’d love to explore that more in the future.

Online platforms have helped me so much reaching a large audience. It is a fantastic space to share my art and

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An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Peripheral ARTeries meets

Russell Metzger Turning the fabrics and other materials into dramatic skyscrapers, gigantic waves, cliffs, mountains, coves, clouds, and even towering flowers. Changing art as we know it!

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

Hello Russell and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would invite our readers to visit http://www.pauldavids-artist.com in order to get a synoptic view about your multifaceted artistic production and would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. Are there experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as an artist and help you to develop your attitude to experiment. Moreover, how does your cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your current artistic research?

acquired a new show-room and had nothing to put on the walls. I didn’t want vacuum cleaner posters, and I’d always loved Monet and van Gogh and thought I could afford their prints to put on the walls of my store. I was stunned at what the prints cost. There was an art supply store a block away from my store, so I had the idea of making my own paintings. I bought canvases and other supplies, and I took the materials to my warehouse and went to work. These creations used the same materials I used on decorative art floors. They were all abstracts. I hung them in my show-room, and within a week a lady came in and asked the cost of one of the paintings. I said a thousand dollars, thinking she was just having conversation, and she said, “I’ll take it!” I was truly FLOORED (pun intended).

My attitude to experiment and evolve as an artist came from my love for music. That was the first art form that moved my soul. I loved the visual arts as a kid but failed first grade art, because I colored outside the lines which was scorned. It wasn’t until my forties that quite by accident I found I had an aptitude for the visual arts. I owned a decorative concrete business and had

You could say my cultural substratum was originally a blue-collar Kansas farm boy. I always wore jeans and boots. I was born in Winchester, Kansas –- a very small town of a couple hundred people – and it happened to be about two miles from Dunavent, Kansas, a town that no longer exists. I was raised in Oskaloosa, a town about 7 miles from Dunavent, which happened to be the

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birthplace and childhood home of John Steuart Curry, a famous painter who created the memorable mural of John Brown the American Civil War Abolitionist as he is holding the Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other – it’s in the State Capitol of Kansas, and also on the cover of the band Kansas’ “Leftoverture” album. I have had an amazing variety of experiences and careers, from national AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) champion pole vaulter to professional musician (rock and roll bands), to selling cars, to living in Mexico where I studied Spanish in college, to owning my own floor business, to driving 18-wheel long-haul trucks. My whole life has been an experiment in trying to find my niche and explore my variety of talents to discover where I could best contribute in life and my society.

Jezebel Wells, the gallery owner of Jezebel’s in Madrid, New Mexico, which was the first gallery that carried my abstracts. Jezebel herself is a world-renowned glass artist who happened to live at one time about two blocks from where Paul grew up in Garrett Park, Maryland. She knew each of us separately and insisted that we meet one another. Much of the course of both of our lives since the day Jezebel introduced us in September of 2008 has flowed from that meeting and our joining of creative forces (albeit, at first not having to do with visual arts). Thirty days later we were recording in Kitty Wells’ studio in Nashville, Tennessee, for a movie project Paul was beginning to work on. I’m still writing and recording my music using the name “Doc Metzger & Snakeoil.” Fast forward to 2012 when I gifted Paul a large (6 foot by 5 foot) art creation on canvas that I made which used decorative materials I had been using for contract jobs for concrete floors. Paul put it up in his Santa Fe vacation home (most of the time he and his wife, Hollace Davids, live in Los Angeles) and after a few weeks of looking at it, he called me up and said “Russell, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but would you mind if I added oil paint to the work you gifted me? I want to paint over it and use what you started but turn it into something else, something different.” I said I didn’t mind – after all, I had given that painting to him.

It’s no doubt that collaborations as the one that you have established with Hollywood producer, writer, director and artist, Paul Jeffrey Davids, are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art, and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet up and collaborate on a project: could you tell us something about this proficient synergy? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between artists from different backgrounds. This was heavily influenced by my meeting up with Paul Jeffrey Davids, who was not only one of the key production people and writers of all the early “Transformers” cartoons for Marvel Productions, but also wrote “Star Wars” books for LucasFilm, and Paul was also a dedicated artist and painted with oil paints. Our meeting was arranged by

When he invited me over to see what he had done, I was impressed. It’s not every day that somebody adds to one of your paintings, thinking they can make it better, and you don’t get pissed. But I loved it. The basis of what I had begun was clearly there,

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but his oil paint had turned it into a scene which seemed alive with atmosphere and excitement, with dark storm clouds, lightning and a river. We decided that fateful day that we had a future creating art together that same way. This was like a moment of conception. In life it would be sperm meeting ovum and fertilizing. In our art it was two approaches to art and two divergent personalities meeting and fusing creative energy to produce a burst of artistic discovery. A few more thoughts about our contrasting personal backgrounds. From our differing childhoods, parents, places where we grew up, things we emphasize, it might be hard for you to find two more different people, and yet we have grown together not just as collaborators but as the closest of buddies with true friendship. Paul is an East Coast person who transplanted himself to the West Coast after graduating from an Ivy League College â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Princeton. His father was a professor of history at Georgetown University and taught students, some who went on to be very famous, including Bill Clinton and Jackie Kennedy, and he worked heavily with then-Senator Kennedy on the creation of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Profiles in Courage, which helped JFK secure the Democratic nomination in 1960. Paul grew up in Kensington and Bethesda, Maryland, and he had made dozens of 8mm movies with miniature dinosaurs and dragons when he was a teenager, and he started studying magic at that age too. (He has been a member of Hollywoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Magic Castle professional magician society for over thirty years.) He is an intellectual by heritage and training, and though he is a very dedicated artist (he has created about 300 canvases and many hundreds of other pen-and-ink drawings), he does have the personality of a Hollywood producer and director. He is always in the middle

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of producing SOMETHING, and usually many somethings at once. I know he has made roughly ten feature length movies now, about half of which have been released to worldwide TV by NBCUniversal, plus he made

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one of the most famous TV films about New Mexico: “Roswell: The UFO Coverup” for Showtime. The American Film Institute selected him to be one of the first 15 students, on full Fellowship, for the Center

for Advanced Film Studies which was then located in Beverly Hills. By contrast, although very athletic, I grew up in a small town like Mayberry in the “Andy

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that no one from my home town could ever make it big doing anything: sports, music, Hollywood, etc. The following year, I placed first in the nation as an AAU pole vaulter for my age group. It was then that I realized that

Griffith Show.â&#x20AC;? Not much was ever expected of anyone from my town â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no one was expected to succeed on the State level, much less on the world stage. I remember my eighth-grade music teacher telling our class

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I damn well could be much bigger than what many, not all, people in small town America think possible. I received an athletic scholarship to the University of New Mexico. As far as my

college goes, I dropped out on my first attempt, flunked out on my second attempt and got straight Aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on my third attempt. I was a singer-songwriter in Nashville in the early 1990â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and was planning on going to law

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school when I graduated. When my wife got pregnant with our third child, it forced a change of direction in my life. I spent the next half a dozen years working for other people until such time as, to quote Bob Dylan: “The axe just fell.” I started my business and was very aware of my obligations to my wife and kids. It was in September of 2008 that Paul Davids first

came into my life, and it has not been the same since. I became associate producer of one of his films, called “Before We Say Goodbye,” and Paul liked one of the paintings in my store so much that he bought it. For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected “Night Snowfall

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in the City,â&#x20AC;? a captivating artwork that is the first collaborative piece that you created with Paul Davids, and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. It has captured our attention for the way your artworks invite the viewers to transcend the picture plan, to create an open space

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that soothes and excites the spectators. When walking our readers through your usual setup and process, we would like to ask you if you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your works. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve asked if there is a central idea that connects all our works. As you can see, the

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of them were 8 feet long.

subjects and themes we choose are very varied and take the viewer from mountaintops to caves, to the surreal beauty of cities at night – so in the work we do together, we are representational artists. (Although much of my solo work is abstract, the co-creations with Paul are always about something the viewer can immediately identify). The central idea that connects our work is making art that is three-dimensional yet uses canvases or large flat boards of wood as the starting point. Our works have elements that “jump off the canvas” but are integral to that canvas. Nothing is extraneous. We are both also moved by what we think is visually beautiful even in seemingly ordinary settings, and we try to convey that beauty in a way that helps the viewer transcend mundane and ordinary reality.

The technique we developed together seemed natural for us as each of us brought his own proficiencies to the work. Once there is a concept in place, I work with the raw materials, usually by subjecting fabric (often clothing, and very frequently old blue jeans I had worn or that my wife and children had worn) to chemicals that enable the fabric to be twisted into various shapes that will permanently harden in place. Then I color the background using various colored thermo-plastic dyes and do coverings of polymers that often create a glossy effect. I then turn my work over to Paul, who sets up with a hundred tubes of oil paints and fifty brushes and goes to work. He literally paints the scenes and oil effects right over what I bring over to his art studio. You ask about Night Snowfall in the City (currently on display in Houshang’s Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico). In that work, which is six feet long and four feet high, seven pairs of blue jeans are attached vertically to a darkened canvas that has been made blue-black and speckled with a snow-like effect. This phase was then transformed by Paul using oil paint into seven skyscrapers and the night lights of a New York theater district down below.

We always discuss ideas and do sketches of various pieces we want to create, and we go for variety: city scenes at night with skyscrapers (we settled on New York and Chicago), coves and caves (such as the Blue Grotto), tributes to our favorite artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Andy Warhol in which we represented those artists with stiffened clothing permanently fixed to canvases that had both poured art and oil paint and in one case was covered with real women’s shoes that Paul had painted and sprinkled with glitter. We chose gigantic flowers as a theme, canyons, waterfalls, clouds, mountains – even a concept for a yogi meditating in the Himalayas. There was much more that all came pouring out as concepts: ice floes in the frozen north, even the gigantic asteroid that struck the earth 65 million years ago and ended the reign of the dinosaurs. These pieces grew until a few

For one of our most original works, 65 Million Years Ago, depicting the asteroid that hit the earth and ended the Jurassic era, after I defined the asteroid and a redorange sky, I adhered a chemically hardened, scrunched, twisted bedsheet to the art that was shaped like an incoming gigantic wave. Paul painted that bedsheet with a hundred colors, bringing it to life as this great force of the sea. He also created a beautiful threatening sky of foreboding

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clouds above the asteroid that is a split second away from striking the ocean.

sum of its parts. It is like one plus one (two artists) generating something that is so much more than twoâ&#x20AC;Ś.

Our work is definitely a demonstration of something becoming much more than the

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Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s two to the tenth power or more.

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As you have remarked once, it was conceived from a challenge: you would cover a huge canvas with hardened Wrangler Jeans and Davids would paint over it with oils. Photographer and sculptor

Zoe Leonard once stated: “the objects that we leave behind hold the marks and the sign of our use: like archeological findings they reveal so much about us.” We’d love to ask you about the qualities of the

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materials that you include in your artworks: how do you select them and what do you address to combine found materials.

skyscrapers. I grew up in blue jeans, so naturally blue jeans are a major element, but it is not restricted to that. For instance in our work “Family Tree,” the base of the tree is made of the father’s and mother’s clothing, and the area of the branches and leaves is the children’s clothing – all from my family, but transformed by chemicals that harden the fabric permanently in various shapes. In

The objects I have used are often ones that are personal for me, generally clothing that I or my family have worn, which I transform into chemically hardened shapes that represent different objects, from clouds to

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the case of our tribute to Vincent van Gogh, we know that Vincent loved to paint himself wearing yellow hats – there are many selfportraits with Yellow Hats. It is why Paul calls his production company Yellow Hat Productions, Inc.

the clothes he had worn while painting that were already covered with oil paint stains. It’s the same explanation for why there are so many women’s shoes in our work called “Andy’s Collection.” One of Andy Warhol’s last paintings was “Diamond Dust Shoes” -of women’s shoes -- so we used actual shoes in our artwork. For our work called “The Ravens” we have clothing representing the

So naturally we incorporated Paul’s actual yellow hat into the work of art and some of

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artist with lots of old paint brushes coming out of the pocket, and an oil-paint-covered pallet incorporated right into the work.

You usually paint large canvas, that provides the viewers with such an immersive visual experience: how do the dimensions of your canvas affect your workflow and how to do you consider the role of dimension playing within the viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s visual experience.

Those are Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s old paint brushes, and one of his old wooden pallets.

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Regarding the size of the collaborative artwork, some subjects or themes seem to demand that the work be big, and that proved true for “65 Million Years Ago.” The whole concept of that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and led to the development of

mammals on earth – it is a huge event, a huge idea. So, the work is eight feet long and four feet tall. It was the same situation with “Chicago Moon.” The moon dominates the work – it is a large, bright, full moon in a shiny starry sky, and we wanted the feeling of it

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casting its light far and wide over a large city with skyscrapers, so again we ended up with a work that is eight feet long and four feet tall. One of our works, called â&#x20AC;&#x153;Zipper Falls,â&#x20AC;? is

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vertical, of a large waterfall. There is a double entendre in that title and idea, when you consider that the cliff the waterfall is flowing from is made of a pair of jeans, and the source

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of the water is from near the actual zipper of those blue jeans. Again, the subject matter dictated that it be vertical and large. Paul has since done a waterfall diptych called “Living

Water” that is 12 feet tall. A few of our works are smaller and more intimate, such as “Jean’s Cove,” which is of a small inlet of a bay with autumn trees above it.

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come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific

We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of your canvases, that create tension and dynamics. How did you

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artwork and in particular, how do you develop a texture?

various shades of white in snowy areas – and of course our “Blue Grotto” has a heavy emphasis on the color blue. But in other areas the color is much more determined by emotion, by my feeling as I approach the initial application of color and materials.

How I come about settling on the colors that I emphasize is greatly influenced by the fact that I live in New Mexico where the sunrises and sunsets are spectacular natural works of art daily. The colors in the skies here are vibrant and vivid. I use music to set my personal emotional tone. I generally start with primary colors and as the painting progresses, I continue by making derivatives of those primary colors. My psychological makeup determines everything, and I usually paint to music, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Sinatra, or the Beatles etc. The tonal texture of the songs influences the texture of the painting.

With its powerful combination between realism and abstract feeling, we daresay that your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appears to be seen rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is it for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meanings? And how would you consider the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your artistic practice?

Color and texture (apart from theme or subject matter) are the two ruling or controlling factors of what our art consists of. All our co-created works have massive emphasis on texture. Even Paul’s solocreated oil paintings always have substantial use of texture – the paintings are a contrast of areas of flat, thinly-applied paint and areas of very thickly-applied oil paint. And so, in our co-created works, the initial texture comes from my use of the applied materials, which is usually cloth but sometimes I have used actual stone, and I use what seems right for the theme and setting. Our paintings of “The Lighthouse,” “Coyote Mesa” and “California Dreaming” use polished flat travertine to represent areas of rock out-cropping which are appropriate to those settings. The choice of color sometimes flows from what is logically appropriate: for example, our night scenes use dark colors in the skies, and our snow-capped mountains use

There is usually a combination of abstraction and the figurative in each of these works, and that may be part of their visual power. They are all basically figurative at heart, meaning they are of things that we can instantly recognize flowers, buildings, clouds, ice floes, waterfalls, etc. However, by having freeflowing abstract areas of the works that come from the use of manipulated colored thermo-plastic, the painting suddenly becomes something much more than its underlying subject. It has a freedom in the flow. Paul is the one who defines how much of that flow of freedom remains, because he sometimes paints over some of the abstract sections to give the defined shape of objects… placing a pier, for example, where there was only water, an ocean, in what I provided to him for him to

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begin the oil painting.

said, the totality of the effect of our artworks seems to excite the viewer both in terms of the viewer’s emotions and his or her thoughts and ideas.

The abstract impact of these co-created works is never fully realized until the final stages of the work are completed. In other words, these are created in steps, in layers. In the earliest stage, some of the effect that gives a sense of wonder appears when the colors are poured onto the canvas and manipulated, and the melding of colors creates marvelous patterns and shapes that cannot be predicted but still can be manipulated. At this point, because I do most of my paintings outside, my paintings are kissed by the New Mexico sun and baked in the heat of the desert.

You are an established artist and over the years your artworks have been showcased on several occasions in multiple locations, including your recent show at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California. The spectator plays an active role in determining meaning in your artworks: What do you hope that the public takes away from your work? Is audience engagement a critical consideration for you, and is there a particular way of engagement that you seek to encourage?

German artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that “it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable”: how do you consider the relation between the abstract feature of the ideas you aim to communicate and the physical act of creating your artworks?

Audience engagement is essential to what we are trying to accomplish – otherwise, what’s the point? Today, some great works of art that are sold for massive prices at auctions may end up locked up in a safe at an insurance company. They are treated no differently than a gold bar under lock and key at Fort Knox. The owner’s priority at that point has nothing to do with offering the artistic experience to the public – it is only about preserving something that is now considered a piece of valuable merchandise. However, the artist’s point of view always begins with the goal that what he or she is creating will have an impact on other people. The work grows from the ambition that there will be a sort of chemical interaction between the individual looking at the art and the art itself and what it is. And in the act of viewing, the beholder is seeing the art through his or her own interpretation and emphasis. The viewer may consider it beautiful or the viewer may feel there is something hideous lurking in the art. The point is, now the eye of the beholder sees the work, something happens inside the beholder. He or

I first learned about color manipulation, and feel I somewhat mastered it, when pouring stains and dyes onto concrete floors to create a floor surface that is a work of art, like a fantasy. However, apart from the background colors, when I would adhere twisted cloth onto canvas, I knew it was missing something. People liked it but for me it was not complete. Then Paul Davids came along and the transformation that I wanted happened organically. Paul’s application of oil painting was essential for a finished work in my mind. The truth is, we both were somewhat stunned by what we were creating – we knew we had something very different. I remember reading a Bette Midler quote that the way to “make it” is to be the first, the best or different. We both knew we fit in there somewhere. With that

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she may just glance and then decide to look away, or he or she may find themselves glued to what they are staring at, drawn in, enchanted by all the little details and subtle effects. That is the kind of engagement we are always striving for. And of course, it is always best, emotionally, for the artist, when the art is on display and can be appreciated. Most art spends a certain amount of time

closeted away – it may even be merely in storage – or it might be on the wall of a home where it is seen by very few people. And then there are the experiences such as we had at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California, where for three months, fifteen of our works dominated a section of the hotel. We appreciate and enjoy the large exhibitions – just as we would enjoy having

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our work in museums. These are unique works of contemporary art. We have not seen any other artists doing anything similar. We planted our flag here first. And speaking of flags, the American flag has also become a thematic symbol in some of these works. “Unknown Soldiers” is especially ambitious in its theme and how it incorporated the flag. The flag is shaped to represent three soldiers, and the one in the center obviously has a wounded leg. The actual uniforms used in the art were worn by unknown active duty soldiers. My nephew, Zach, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army at the time, sent me battle-dress uniforms from Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I fashioned the uniforms after famous wartime photographs of soldiers helping wounded warriors out of battle. It is currently on display at Jezebel’s Gallery in Madrid, NM. We have appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation, we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Russell. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? First of all, I would like to thank you for giving myself and Paul Jeffrey Davids the opportunity to share our artwork with your audience, because it truly introduces these works in a way that displays their uniqueness and in effect show-cases them as a distinct and meaningful facet of contemporary art. This facet of art really does deserve its place (and I would say its recognition) in the field of art that is truly contemporary, that truly breaks new ground that has not been explored and accomplished in this way ever

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Contemporary Art

WHITE COLLAR PEAK CLOSEUP

before. Thus, Paul and I will continue to plan for new themes and new works, but a priority for us, having now done 24 of these works together, is to have them widely exhibited, and to find homes for some of them in museums where we think they belong. And we are honored to have our

work seen and discussed in a magazine of this caliber.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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